FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | THE JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | BLAMING THE VICTIMS
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by Dovid Katz
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, born in 1922, who lost her entire family in the Holocaust, escaped the Vilna Ghetto several moments before it was encircled by police preparing for its final liquidation on 23 September 1943. Together with Dobke Develtov [update: who passed away in 2012 in Los Angeles], she made it to this underground anti-Nazi partisan fort that was home to fighters aligned with the Soviet partisans. The precise number of inhabitants varied with newcomers and deaths in battle. Fania remembers at one time 99 of 101 were Jewish Vilna Ghetto escapees, at another 101 of 107. An underground bunker like this was home until the fall of Nazi rule in July 1944.
Along with other Holocaust Survivors who resisted — including Yitzhak Arad and Rachel Margolis — Ms Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, has in recent years been the object of a campaign of defamation and harassment in Lithuania.
The antisemitic press has targeted her (January 2008). Armed police came to search for her (May 2008). Prosecutors told the press she could not be found (May 2008). The editor of Lithuania’s main news portal called for her to be tried (May 2009). The mainstream media, citing ruling-party members of Lithuania’s parliament, branded her a war criminal (Oct 2009). And one of the country’s leading associations for human rights (!) demanded that she and other Jewish partisan veterans be ‘sentenced’ for committing ‘a massive slaughter’ (Dec. 2010).
All in the absence of any charge or iota of evidence.
“I dream that good people from all over the world will not forget the Holocaust in Lithuania or our struggle to stay alive and to fight the Nazis and their collaborators, that for generations to come they will make their way here to look and see where we, a hundred Vilna Ghetto survivors who lost our entire families, lived, loved, fought, and dreamt of a better tomorrow.” — Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky
Lithuanian poet, scholar and humanist Tomas Venclova (Yale University) publishes a major 
Vilnius’s one Holocaust museum, 
A leading news portal attacks
In the summer of 2010, 
Rachel Kostanian, the courageous director, valiantly keeps alive one of the rare local bastions of public integrity on the Holocaust in Lithuania, having constantly to fend off obstacles. Read Esther Goldberg’s portrait in the special Jewish New Year’s supplement on great Jewish women of the ages in the 
The Estonian president obfuscates the Holocaust during his Jerusalem visit by recombinating perpetrators and victims as ‘partners’. 
A Latvian court approved & police nixed a Riga March celebrating Hitler’s 1941 Invasion. Still, the June 2010 event went ahead with a wreath-laying at Riga’s Liberty Monument to celebrate the Nazi army’s arrival and warm welcome. 
On 29 June 2010, the Lithuanian Parliament 
But in modern Litvak collective memory, there is perhaps one incident, that took place one day before, that will be remembered even more. The Lithuanian delegation was met by a picket line of Holocaust survivors near Yad Vashem. One elderly survivor, Y. Brosh, whose entire family was murdered at Ponar, made his feelings known robustly. Like the other survivors who protested, he was wearing a yellow star on his jacket. President Brazauskas went over to to the man, hugged him and kissed him.
