Author Archives: Defending History

Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva

Posted on 6 February 2025 by Defending History

FILM | ARTS | OPINION | SHEDUVA | SAULIUS BERŽINIS

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FILM REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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The history of Lithuania during the Second World War is complex and tragic. After short-lived continued independence in 1939-1940, following the playing out of the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the USSR effectively took over Lithuania in June 1940 and established a harsh regime. Tens of thousands of inhabitants were then deported to Siberia, with big blocks of victims just one week prior to Germany’s June 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazi invaders and high numbers of local collaborators slaughtered 96.4% of the Jewish population of the country, over 200,000 people, one of the highest rates of the genocide of the Jews in Holocaust-era Europe. In 1944, the USSR liberated the country from the Germans, and then went on to occupy it until its renewed independence in 1990. It has since rapidly evolved into a successful EU and NATO state.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva

Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation

Posted on 4 February 2025 by Defending History

FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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The following is a full translation of the recent email blast published in Defending History in the original Lithuanian on 31 Jan. For background see the English introduction there, as well as reports and discussion on the DH editor’s Facebook page. For a full chronology of the now nineteen year old campaign against Holocaust survivors who survived by joining the anti-Nazi resistance see DH’s Blaming the Victims page.  Obersvers have noted that the German teacher recruited to launch the campaign of defamation against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) and Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis, I. Tumavičiūtė in a January 2008 article in a far-right antisemitic daily (original; English translation) reappears this week as the campaign, apparently including the Genocide Center (GRRLC) and its director, is duly relaunched. Note the text contains the link to the online clip from a Soviet-era documentary where Fania Brantsovsky’s remarks about regrettable civilian casualties during the partisans’ battles against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania is maliciously taken out of context to imply targeting of civilians and/or her own participation in the battle described. The youtube video clip, that has been up for seven years is entitled “isgama  branvcovskaja” that translates as “The Degenerate Brantsovsky” or “Scum Brantsovsky.” More background of “polite” state support for the defamation of Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance includes the public statement for a video documentary by the executive director of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”). The participation of the state-sponsored Genocide Center in this week’s events is apparently meant to give the new campaign an air of legitimacy, during a time of much-heightened antisemitic sentiment.

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https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/

COMMEMORATION of Kaniūkai Village Residents, Murdered by Soviet Partisans in 1944

February 2, 2025

10:30 AM – Holy Mass at St. Ignatius Church (Vilnius)
11:30 AM – Departure for Kaniūkai village cemetery (Šalčininkai district) after the Holy Mass
2:00 PM – Start of the commemoration event

Participants:

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, General Director of GRRCL

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation

Antisemitism in Lithuania Soars with Rise of New Populist Party that Scored Major Electoral Success and is Now in Ruling Coalition

Posted on 3 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

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OPINION

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Societal antibodies against a sudden rise in national antisemitism seem to have taken a rather notable hit in Lithuania since the sudden, and some would say, meteoric rise, of populist politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis. Just over one year ago, his new populist party came into being with an overt antisemitic component best known from its leader’s remarks on social media that combine classic Baltic Holocaust-based antisemitism with anti-Israel based bias in a new synthesis of prejudice against our country’s tiny Jewish minority, now numbering less than three thousand souls. It is called the “Dawn of Nemunas Political Party”  (in Lithuanian: “Politinė partija “Nemuno Aušra” — PPNA), often shortened to “Dawn of Nemunas” or “Nemunas Dawn” (Lithuanian: Nemuno aušra — NA). It has become extremely popular and has not only entered parliament (the Seimas), but was been accepted in December, following elections in November, as coalition partner for the winning  Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) led by the current prime minister, Gintautas Paluckas. Some of the ins-and-outs have been sumarized in Defending History.

Banner of Žemaitaitis new (and successful) populist, antisemitic party in the recent parliamentary elections. The “Pillars of Gediminas” symbol in the center of the logo, while neutral in the context of various government functions, has come to assume a connotation of far-right extremism when employed by political groups and organizations.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Roma, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Antisemitism in Lithuania Soars with Rise of New Populist Party that Scored Major Electoral Success and is Now in Ruling Coalition

International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 2 February 2025 by Defending History

[last update]

See Note below

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Videos Online

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Written statements:

Rabbi Elchonon Baron

Ruta Bloshtein

Rabbi S. J. Feffer

Bernard Fryshman

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Blaming the Victims: Documents and Sources

Posted on 31 January 2025 by Defending History

UPDATED 31 Jan. 2025 (originally published 21 Aug. 2010). See also (older, not updated) Responses page.

2006    2007    2008    2009    2010    2011   2012    2013    2014    2015    2016    2017   2025

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Preface

The campaign of defamation by Lithuanian state prosecutors and allied elites (particularly in the Genocide Center and the antisemitic right-wing press) has resulted in a number of cherished Holocaust Survivors being smeared as “war criminals” without a single charge ever having been leveled against anybody. Launched in 2006, the campaign, abusing tools such as “pre-trial investigations” and leaks to the media, have sought to brand as “war criminals” the heroes of the war against Hitler. It grew in 2011 with the addition of equally perverse  “libel charges,” launched with fanfare when Interpol (!) was sent to disturb in Tel Aviv the elected head of the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world. Then, in 2013, the state’s “red-brown commission” defamed one of Vilnius’s last survivors on equally perverse grounds, all the while putting on “Holocaust events” for naive Western audiences, usually funded by the (unknowing) Lithuanian taxpayer, in venues  including London, New York, Toronto, and Vilnius.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Blaming the Victims: Documents and Sources

Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)?

Posted on 31 January 2025 by Defending History

FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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The following email blast with its links to online sites, forthcoming events in Vilnius, and at its end, a link to an old  and an out-of-context defamatory video extract on youtube, has been widely recirculated this week. It comes on the heels of the state Jewish museum’s ill-conceived event  legitimizing the director of the state-funded Genocide Center, an institution that champions glorification of collaborators, defamation of victims and history revisionism in the far-right spirit of East European ultranationalism. See also the shameful longtime position of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” and Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Resource Page; Fania Brantsovsky section; summary of state prosecutors’ campaign of defamation; index of topics and videos posted at the time of her death, at age 102, last September, including a call for a formal state apology to her family and those of fellow Holocaust survivors who became heroes of the free world by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join up with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania. Fania’s last wish was for the “Jewish Partisan Fort” outside Vilnius to be restored and preserved for future generations. More on editor’s Facebook page (with discussion in the comments that follow).

[UPDATE OF 4 FEB. 2025: See now full translation of the text below, and further discussion on Dovid Katz’s Facebook page].

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https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/

Kaniūkų kaimo gyventojų, 1944 m. nužudytų raudonųjų partizanų,
MINĖJIMAS
2025 m. vasario 2 d.

10.30 val. šv. Mišios Šv. Ignoto bažnyčioje (Vilniuje)
11.30 val. po šv. Mišių vykstame į Kaniūkų kaimo kapinaites (Šalčininkų r.)
14.00 val. renginio pradžia
Renginyje dalyvauja:
– LGGRTC gen. direktorius dr. Arūnas Bubnys
– Seimo narys prof. Valdas Rakutis
– Šalčininkų r. atstovas
– Karaliaus Mindaugo šaulių 10-osios rinktinės Vilniaus (1003) kuopos vadas dr. Kostas Ivanauskas
ir kuopos šauliai
– Nacionalinis susivienijimasContinue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)?

Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

Posted on 16 January 2025 by Defending History

GENOCIDE CENTER & MUSEUM |  A. BUBNYS | NOREIKA WORSHIP | ŠKIRPA WORSHIP | MUSEUMS

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OPINION

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The Defending History community, which has expressed profound admiration for recent major progress of Lithuania’s state Jewish museum (“Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History”), is saddened that the museum has chosen to commemorate this year’s International Holocaust Commemoration Day by a 30 Jan. event featuring revisionist historian Dr. A. Bubnys, director of the “Holocaust fixing” Genocide Center (who proudly and publicly poses with placards of leading Holocaust collaborators J. Noreika and K. Škirpa). Without including in the panel a single Lithuanian champion of truthtelling. Let alone a single Jewish member of the panel. Let alone families of survivors and victims.

To pour salt on the wounds, the announced topic is “Effectiveness of the Book as a Media in the Wars of Historical Memory.” Yes, the author of Genocide Center produced and published books at the vanguard of the new incarnation of Holocaust Denial via obfuscation, distortion, “Double Genocide” revisionism, victim-blaming and perpetrator-worship, is on offer from an EU/NATO member’s “state Jewish museum” as its way of marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For shame.

We call on the museum to cancel immediately this ill-conceived stunt, whose prime political purpose is an unadulterated attempt at legitimizing East European glorification of Holocaust collaborators and the ultranationalist rewriting of history via partnerships with ostensibly “Jewish entities.” Same tired old playbook, and it won’t work. There is, moreover, the insult for victims and survivors and the pain hoisted on their families today. This is grave disrespect toward the citizens of Lithuania whose hard earned tax euros support both institutions so generously. As for it all invoking the name of the Gaon of Vilna — he is surely twisting in his grave.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

The Saga of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva: In Spite of ‘Ban’, Copies are Circulating Widely

Posted on 8 January 2025 by Defending History

[LATEST UPDATE; ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: 27 APRIL 2023]

OPINION|FILM|BOLD CITIZENS|SAULIUS BERŽINIS|SHEDUVA | MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL

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Partial chronology of recent events in the life and times of modern Lithuania’s first major Holocaust truth teller, documentary film maker

Saulius Beržinis

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JUMP TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

TO UPDATES; LATEST UPDATE

FOREIGN JOURNALIST’S ARTICLE WITHDRAWN FROM PUBLICATION

DEFENDING HISTORY’S BERŽINIS SECTION

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What is it all about?

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Saga of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva: In Spite of ‘Ban’, Copies are Circulating Widely

Some Ins and Outs of the Antisemitic-Led Party now in Lithuania’s Governing Coalition

Posted on 3 January 2025 by Defending History

ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA

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From the Saga of Žemaitaitis

A publicly antisemitic party is in the governing coalition of one of the Eastern EU member states for the first time, raising deep concerns both near and far

NOTE: These highlighted facets,  Nov. 2024 through January 2025, do not represent a chronological history. They represent salient landmarks in the saga from the perspective of Defending History.

Egzaminas premjerui“: ką R.Žemaitaitis ...

His party is in the governing coalition of an EU state

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Andrew Higgins in the New York Times on inclusion of party of avowed antisemitic MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis in Lithuania’s new governing coalition; Defending History is cited. As PDF.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, News & Views | Comments Off on Some Ins and Outs of the Antisemitic-Led Party now in Lithuania’s Governing Coalition

Antisemitism, Holocaust Revisionism, and Anti-Israelism in Modern Lithuania

Posted on 26 November 2024 by Defending History

OPINION  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM  |  LITHUANIAN JEWISH LIFE 

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by Arkady Kurliandchik

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Reflecting on the current situation in Lithuania, where open antisemites do not hesitate to reveal themselves as such, I am trying to understand the origins of such behavior.

According to some historians, approximately 20,000 people in Lithuania actively participated in the extermination of Jews during World War II. And those who did not personally engage in the killings but considered such extermination to be just and commendable numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Antisemitic propaganda did not originate in Germany, but before the war, it became particularly sophisticated there. Jews were portrayed as insects that needed to be exterminated. And then this initiative was adopted and further developed in Lithuania.

Viewpoint of a Jewish citizen in today’s Vilnius

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arkady Kurliandchik, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Antisemitism, Holocaust Revisionism, and Anti-Israelism in Modern Lithuania

The German Army and People During the Holocaust: So What Were They Thinking?

Posted on 24 November 2024 by Defending History

OPINION  |  HISTORY

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by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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  • In that town, I spied in the debris
  • The thorn fragment of a parchment scroll
  • And gently brushed away the dirt to see
  • What tale it told.
  • Written on it was “In a strange land” —
  • Just a few words from the Bible, but the sum
  • Of all one needs to understand
  • Of a pogrom.

 (by Z. Jabotinsky, following the Berdichev pogrom, from Jabotinsky. A Life by Hillel Halkin, Yale University Press, 2014)

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You are from Hashomer Hatsair? Mordecai asked me. Yes, I still remember the Zionists from Vienna.” Surprisingly the man who asked Chaika Grossman the question was an Austrian, officer in the Wehrmacht, stationed in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), who later was captured and killed by the Nazis because, as Grossman remembered, he was

“a tall officer, Schmidt, who served in the Vilna occupation army (…) He headed a collection station for soldiers who had lost their units. Cars and all kinds of papers were at his disposal. In short, the officer began a rescue operation.”

(from The Underground Army – Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto, by Chaika Grossman, Holocaust Library, New York, 1987; she survived the war, emigrated to Israel and became a member of the Knesset)

So, one Wehrmacht officer who helped the Jews living underground outside the Vilna Ghetto. Is this enough to redeem the honor of Germany and Austria? Is this even worth mentioning at all when focusing not on individual heroism but on the bigger picture of what it is that happened?

I have long believed in the collective guilt of the German and Austrian nations in the perpetration of the Holocaust. That is my opinion.

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Posted in History, News & Views, Roland Binet | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The German Army and People During the Holocaust: So What Were They Thinking?

‘Harvard Crimson’ Report on Zaritt Saga Fails to Mention Abuse of Harvard’s Name for Legitimizing the Campaigns of Academic Exclusion by ‘In Geveb’

Posted on 21 November 2024 by Defending History

IN GEVEB WATCH  |  OPINION  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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VILNIUS—Today’s comprehensive and much-researched article on Saul N. Zarrit’s tenure situation in the Harvard Crimson fails to make any mention of his alleged instrumentalization (or, in more common parlance, “use as Harvard hit man”) by a retired grandee of the field — himself a sibling of the previous long-time, and illustrious, Harvard professor of Yiddish — in the editing (and providing of apparent “Big H legitimacy”) of the online publication “In Geveb” which, it is alleged, pursues the retired grandee’s vendettas against Yiddish scholars who do not meet with his liking.

After years of silence, this journal began to track the disturbing pattern in the section In Geveb Watch. Beyond possible abuse for selective bashing of scholars, there have been questions about alleged distortion (failure to even mention existence of the “other side of the story”) of the late 20th century history of Yiddish Studies at Oxford University. In the spirit of constructive response, this journal has constructed an in-progress online library of full scan-ins (gratis) of both the academic and literary publishing output, in the Yiddish language, of the Oxford Program in Yiddish. Work is underway on a parallel page providing publications in English, starting with Origins of the Yiddish Language and Dialects of the Yiddish Language.

Posted in In Geveb Watch, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs, Yiddish at Oxford | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Harvard Crimson’ Report on Zaritt Saga Fails to Mention Abuse of Harvard’s Name for Legitimizing the Campaigns of Academic Exclusion by ‘In Geveb’

Rabbi Elchonon Baron calls on Lithuania’s President & Presumptive PM Not to Enable New Coalition Government that Includes Openly Antisemitic Party

Posted on 8 November 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | RABBI BARON SECTION

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SEE UPDATES ON FRONT PAGE
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by Rabbi Elchonon Baron

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Honorable Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania

Below is a letter I sent to Mr. Gintauatas Paluckas this morning from Vilnius. We stand tonight on the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht in a country, Lithuania, that witnessed the annihilation of 96.4% of its Jewry just eight decades ago. In the name of civilization and a free and modern Europe, unshackled by ancient endemic antisemitism and all the allied ills that come with it, I implore you not to allow the formation of a government that includes the openly antisemitic “The Dawn of the Nemunas” party. It is a slippery and dangerous path for any European country to take, and greatly risks arousing the centuries-old European demon of antisemitism in Lithuania and beyond. It will not be understood by anyone in the world any differently.

 

Has Europe Forgotten So Soon?

Open Letter to Presumptive Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas:

I am writing from Vilna just as a bona fide European Pogrom on Israeli soccer fans plays out in Amsterdam, and a day before the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Just over twelve hours ago I heard the shocking news that you and your Social Democrat party have invited “The Dawn of the Nemunas” headed by the avowed court-confirmed antisemite Remigijus Žemaitaitis (who has claimed that the Jews have killed the Lithuanians—not the reverse) to join your coalition to govern Lithuania, and I was too distressed to respond immediately.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron calls on Lithuania’s President & Presumptive PM Not to Enable New Coalition Government that Includes Openly Antisemitic Party

Vilnius “Jews-for-Jesus” Conference to Feature Verbickienė and Toleikis

Posted on 24 September 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | ANTISEMITISM | VILNIUS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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by Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—For centuries, missionaries have cunningly preyed on small, weak, fractured and vulnerable Jewish communities, cleverly roping in widely known and respected figures to lend a veneer of academic or intellectual legitimacy. At issue is whether the majority Christian culture is prepared to accept as equals a minority whose theology differs, without campaigns to “recruit souls” which implies the worst about the faith and people whose souls need to be “saved.” Indeed, the necessary conclusion about the inherent evil (in the case at hand historically including the charge of deicide) of the unconverted played its role in the mindset that was among the conceptual prerequisites for the Holocaust. Around 96% of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens were massacred. Some local priests risked everything to hide and rescue a Jewish neighbor. Others gave pep talks to the local shooters ensuring them that they were firing at the Devil himself. The issue is one that calls for humility, intercultural respect, and human sensitivity.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius “Jews-for-Jesus” Conference to Feature Verbickienė and Toleikis

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja): 1922-2024

Posted on 22 September 2024 by Defending History

FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | OBITUARIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | JEWISH PARTISAN HEROES DEFAMED BY VILNIUS PROSECUTORS

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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky: “My last wish is that the Jewish Partisan Fort, where we lived, and where we fought the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania, be preserved and restored so future generations will know of our resistance against genocide, and so we honor all those who fell fighting for the freedom of all of us.”

Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: Saga of 2008. Call to preserve “Fania’s fort in the forest” for future generations.

See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section: how Vilna’s most beloved Yiddish icon was pursued by authorities hell bent on revising Holocaust history.

Update: See now the Following Fania project

Fania’s family, heirs and students deserve a formal state apology for the shameful campaign of prosecution and defamation (chronology) against her and the other Jewish partisan veterans, all in the spirit of “Double Genocide” Holocaust revisionism (video sample). Follow the history to see also the inspirational leading role in Vilnius of then Irish ambassador to Lithuania Dónal Denham; also Austria’s Andrea Wicke, Norway’s Steinar Gil, UK’s  Simon Butt, USA’s John A. Cloud. All in support of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015). The historical juxtaposition of the campaign against Jewish partisans and Holocaust revisionism is perhaps best symbolized by the occurrence on single date — 3 June 2008 — of Ambassador Dónal Denham’s reception honoring Ms. Brantsovsky in Vilnius and the proclaiming of the Prague Declaration in Vilnius. Historian and former Yad Vashem chairman Yitzhak Arad, himself a defamed partisan, would go on to research Lithuanian officials’ role in the Prague Declaration.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries | Comments Off on Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja): 1922-2024

Flanders and the Remembrance of the Victims of the German Wars of Aggression Against Belgium

Posted on 8 September 2024 by Defending History

OPINION  |  HISTORY  |  BELGIUM  |  MUSEUMS

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by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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A few days ago I was flabbergasted when I read a news item in the FOCUS website for West-Flanders where I live. On Saturday, August 24, 2024, in Zeebrugge there had been a commemoration ceremony for the crews of two German submarines (U-5 and UC-14) sunk during World War I and just recently identified. This official commemoration ceremony took place in the presence of the German ambassador Martin Kotthaus and the Governor for West-Flanders Carl Decaluwé: “More than one hundred years ago, the crews of these two submarines died in the middle of a horrible war. I am very grateful that today we can grieve for the dead together as friends and partners,” declared the  current German ambassador.

It is perhaps interesting to remind readers that in the past Flanders had already made a wrong choice regarding the only illustration for World War I within the ‘Flemish Canon’ (see my article, “Wrong Choice for New “Flemish Canon”). On that occasion, the choice was of a statue of a grieving couple situated in the German military cemetery of Vladslo in Flanders, a couple grieving for their slain son Peter, a German soldier who had died while his regiment attacked Ypres in October 1914, just when the danger of the whole of Belgium being overrun by the German army had been at its highest.

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Arkady Kurliandchik’s Heroic Stand at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 25 August 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | ARKADY KURLIANDCHIK

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VILNIUS—Last Thursday, 22 August, Defending History distributed the link to an ultranationalist announcement of a demonstration scheduled for the following day at the Old Vina Jewish Cemetery. The demonstration would be against not, directly speaking, the preservation of the Jewish cemetery (though that is the upshot), but against the recent “compromise” that would effectively in any event destroy the cemetery forever: keeping the hated Soviet monstrosity and turning it into a memorial center with exhibits 75% Jewish and 25% Lithuanian. As pointed out by Defending History, this is in any case a (disguised) new events center with seating for thousands who would clap, cheer and flush lavatories surrounded by thousands of extant graves.

Far-right demonstrators stand atop thousands of extant Jewish graves at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. To prevent preservation and restoration of the old  cemetery they seem to have just decided that a hated Soviet building is in fact a symbol of Lithuanian independence (!). Defending History photo by William Adan Pahl.

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Posted in Arkady Kurliandchik, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Arkady Kurliandchik’s Heroic Stand at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Dying a Thousand Deaths: Holocaust Survivors in the Eastern Lands Taken by Hitler in 1941

Posted on 20 August 2024 by Defending History

OPINION  |  HISTORY  |  LATVIA

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by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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Simon Wiesenthal recounted that he escaped the threat of imminent death seven times as a slave and captive of the Nazis during World War II. Frida Michelson, a Latvian Jew from Riga, escaped an imminent death when on December 8, 1941, moments before she would have been ordered into a grave to be shot in Rumbula, she threw herself on the ground in the snow and pretended to be dead. She was saved by the fact that hundreds of pairs of shoes were piled on her body covering her from the eyes of the murderers, who did not discover her. Otherwise, she would not have told her story to David Silberman.[1]

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Posted in Books, Film, History, Latvia, News & Views, Roland Binet | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dying a Thousand Deaths: Holocaust Survivors in the Eastern Lands Taken by Hitler in 1941

Kaunesia: Travelling the Dark Memory Lanes of Kaunas

Posted on 18 August 2024 by Defending History

 

OPINION | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS | ANTISEMITISM

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by Adam J. Sacks

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It says something that the only “Devil Museum” in the world is to be found in Kaunas, Lithuania. This city sometimes also known as Kovno, is the most Lithuanian of cities, the capital of independent Lithuania in the interwar years, and still today, the more fully Lithuanian when contrasted to the more multicultural current capital of Vilnius. The Russian, Polish, and English languages, for instance, which are fairly common in Vilnius, are nary to be heard in Kaunas. This “Devil’s Museum” is a global and learned collection of 3000 figurines from 70 countries made by a prominent Lithuanian professor and is certainly a landmark and a must-see. The devil is the most dominant figure in Lithuanian folklore. This figure apparently has a thousand names in the ancient Sanskrit-related Lithuanian language, with over 400 places names and 5000 legends featuring this character. While surveying the collection, so many features of these legends pop out: the devil is rich, often a thief, one who pours coins, who controls the vodka trade, imparts powers of virtuosity on the violin, and who even, at times, cooks humans.

In the accompanying notes, one learns that the devil is often depicted as a nobleman, sometimes even as a German. Yet nowhere in the entire museum however is even the word Jew, or Jewish, even mentioned. Needless to say, the physiognomy in the overwhelming majority of the figurines closely matches the hallmarks and the stereotype of the antisemitic rendering of “the Jew.” The characteristic markings could not be more clear: facial features such as the long or hooked nose, thick lips, flaring nostrils, the strangely squat or wiry physique, beady eyes and the deep eyebrow ridges. This figure is also well known, inter alia, from the centuries of representations of Jews per se featured during Lithuania’s end-of-winter, Mardi Gras-like Užgavėnės festival.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Kaunesia: Travelling the Dark Memory Lanes of Kaunas

The Defending History Community’s Statement on Putin’s Barbaric War on Ukraine (and the Free World)

Posted on 13 August 2024 by Defending History

[UPDATE — STATEMENT ORIGINALLY ISSUED ON 25 FEB. 2022]

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Renewing our call of 25 Feb. 2022:

The Defending History community joins in calling for immediate restoration of peace and security for all the people of Ukraine, condemning unequivocally the savage and medievally barbaric invasion — and rain of death and destruction with mass murder and terrorization of a peaceful civilian population — by the neighboring big power, the Russian Federation, led by our century’s most dangerous and deranged warmonger dictator. Ukraine’s victory will be the victory of the free and democratic world everywhere, as will the fall of the Putinist regime of dictatorship, brutality, invasion, and mass murder of civilians.

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Posted in News & Views, Ukraine | Comments Off on The Defending History Community’s Statement on Putin’s Barbaric War on Ukraine (and the Free World)