Germany
Protected: Let Us Together Restore the Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort in Lithuania
Posted in Germany, Gert Weisskirchen, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, German 45th Brigade in Lithuania, Gert Weisskirchen, Litauenbrigade
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Text of Question and Answer in the German Parliament on Lithuania’s Last Remnants of Jewish Partisan Fort in the Forest (right next door to the new German Army Brigade)
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | BLAMING THE VICTIMS
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BERLIN—The German Bundestag’s 16 December 2025 record of questions-and-answers on the remnants of the last Jewish partisan fort in Lithuania, is now online on the German parliamentary website (and available as separate PDF). The Bundestag followed up with a press release affirming respect for the site. See now Defending History’s evolving page on the subject.
Images of the individual pages:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, German Army 45th Brigade in Lithuania, Last Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania, Rachel Margolis, Rudninkai Jewish Fort Remains and German Army
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Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe
[LAST UPDATE (SEE AT END): 20 JUNE 2025]
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EASTERN EUROPE | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GERMANY | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—International media has reported in detail on last week’s military ceremonies in Vilnius celebrating the permanent installation of thousands of German soldiers as part of NATO forces in Lithuania, southernmost of the three Baltic republics. The new entity is “Germany’s 45th Armoured Brigade” (Panzerbrigade 45) that is also known as the “Lithuania Brigade”.
The Defending History community is a staunch supporter of the values and security needs of the European Union, NATO, the Western alliance of free and democratic nations, and has from day one condemned the medieval, barbaric February 2022 invasion and unleashing of mass death and destruction upon Ukraine by Putin’s Russian Federation forces. Our support includes reproducing a statement that has appeared for over a decade on p. 1 of DefendingHistory.com (right hand column). As stated there, adherence to the democratic values of the EU and the NATO alliance includes cherishing the free-speech right to criticize: efforts to rewrite Holocaust history by Eastern Europe’s ultranationalist far right; efforts to defame the victims, including Jewish partisans who fought valiantly against the Nazis; efforts to disseminate Double Genocide revisionism in the realm of Holocaust and World War II history; efforts to glorify Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators; efforts to curtail free speech by criminalizing or delegitimizing views that oppose these efforts.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Birgit Kraemer, Chancellor Merz, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Germany's "Lithuania Brigade", Germany's 45th Armoured Brigade, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Jewish partisans in Vilna, Mantautas Sulskis, NATO in Lithuania, Panzerbrigade 45, Rūdninkai Forest, Rūdninkai training ground, Rūdninkų giria, Rudnítsker vald
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Arkady Kurliandchik Critiques German Embassy’s Kukliansky Award
OPINION | LITHUANIA’S JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | GERMANY
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by Arkady Kurliandchik (Vilnius)
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I am aware that it has long been a practice to award assorted leaders with assorted honors on assorted occasions. Perhaps there is some logic behind it. If you are the leader of something, well, then surely you must deserve recognition!
However, the recent award which was bestowed on the D-Day anniversary upon the head of the “Lithuanian Jewish Community” by the German Embassy here in Vilnius seems rather misplaced. As stated on the LJC website, the award was presented to Ms. Faina Kukliansky “for her tireless work commemorating Lithuanian Holocaust victims and long-term efforts to unite the LJC including enhancing the organization’s role on the national and international level.”
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Arkady Kurliandchik, Faina Kukliansky, Germany, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged American Jewish Committee (AJC), Andrew Baker (AJC), Arkady Kurliandchik, Faina Kukliansky, German Embassy in Vilnius, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Vilnius Jewish community
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President of Germany Honors Major East European ‘History Dissident’ Rachel Kostanian, Longtime Head of Vilnius’s Only Holocaust Museum
RACHEL KOSTANIAN | TRIBUTES ON HER 91ST BIRTHDAY | MUSEUMS | GERMANY
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Andreas Görgen, head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication of Germany’s Federal Foreign Office presents Rachel Kostanian the Presidential Order of Merit signed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Lukas Welz, chairman of AMCHA Germany was there and issued today’s press release. Photos: Florian Krauss for AMCHA Germany.
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Rachel Kostanian in 2010
VILNIUS—Rachel Kostanian, doyenne of Holocaust history dissidents in Lithuania and beyond led, for over a quarter century, a tiny little museum in a wooden green house — it came to be known internationally as The Green House — high up a driveway invisible from the street, that insisted on telling the bitter truth about the Holocaust. Though part of the state’s Jewish museum complex officially, she personally raised support for its own major projects and publications and kept the editorial control independent. Her museum told the truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust, starting with the mass campaign of murder, plunder, humiliation and violence unleashed by the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF), and other local “White-Armbanders” before the first German soldiers even arrived in June 1941. The huge “Genocide Museum” on the city’s main boulevard, by contrast, some seven minutes’ walk away, has a large hall dedicated to glorification of these same collaborators as supposedly heroic leaders of an anti-Soviet “rebellion” (a strange term here, as the Soviets were fleeing Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbanded fascists). As it turns out, the issue comes to the fore in 2021, with the 80th anniversary of the events looming, and the nation’s parliament having named the year in honor of an LAF member accused of atrocities.
Posted in Events, Germany, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian, The Green House
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Berlin Press Release on German President’s Award of Order of Merit to Rachel Kostanian
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The following press release was received today from the office of Lukas Welz, chairman of the board of AMCHA Germany, who nominated Rachel Kostanian for the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Contacts: Email: info@amcha.de. Twitter: @amchade. Facebook: www.facebook.com/amcha.deutschland.
See also: Defending History’s report on the event; tributes and good wishes published on Ms. Kostanian’s 91st birthday; and DH’s Rachel Kostanian section.
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Rachel Kostanian Awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
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From left: Rachel Kostanian; Andreas Görgen, head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication of Germany’s Federal Foreign Office; Lukas Welz, chairman of AMCHA Germany. Below: The Order of Merit. Photos: Florian Krauss for AMCHA Germany.
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BERLIN—Rachel Kostanian was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on February 9, 2021 in Berlin for her lifelong work in researching and remembering the Holocaust in Lithuania. For a quarter century she was director of a small but world-renowned and unique Holocaust museum in Vilnius, Lithuania, known as The Green House that she co-founded as Soviet rule was crumbling in the late 1980s.
Posted in Germany, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian, The Green House
Tagged AMCHA Germany, Andreas Görgen, German Presidential Order of Merit, Holocaust educators, Holocaust in Lihtuania, Holocaust mueseums, Lukas Welz, Rachel Kostanian
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Clemens Heni Confronts the “Red-Brown Equalization Project” in Major Interview in “Frankfurter Rundschau”
MEDIA WATCH | GERMANY | ANTISEMITISM | DOUBLE GENOCIDE
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BERLIN—In a groundbreaking interview with Dr. Clemens Heni, director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) in the leading German liberal daily Frankfurter Rundschau, Heni criticizes the ongoing comparison of Hitler and Stalin and the relativization of the Holocaust. He reminds readers, in the interview conducted by journalist Katja Thorwarth, what psychoanalyst Zvi Rix had to say about German reception of the Holocaust: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Germany, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform"
Tagged Antisemitism in Germany, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide, Frankfurter Rundschau, Katja Thorwarth, Prague Declaration (2008)
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Honest Error at German Embassy in Vilnius?
OPINION | USE AND ABUSE OF PONÁR | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | GERMANY
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VILNIUS—“There is nothing new under the sun,” as the Good Book says (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Sure, on occasion, Irish communities will feud in Boston, Italians in New York, Chinese in LA and Lithuanians in Chicago. It is part of the professional training, posture, and policy of diplomats to negotiate such inevitabilities by way of common sense, wisdom, and fairness. For years now, the widely admired German ambassador to Lithuania, HE Jutta Schmitz has kept her embassy’s diplomatic table open to people and organizations, governmental and non-governmental, from across the colorfully diverse spectrum of opinion in Lithuania. It is not known whether the recent completion of her Vilnius ambassadorship and departure from Lithuania, and the temporary vacancy, had anything to do with the embassy’s recent, and quite innocent, faux-pas.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius)
Tagged Ambassador Jutta Schmitz (Vilnius), Faina Kukliansky, German Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC), Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevicius), Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC)
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Major German Holocaust Scholar Slips (Again) into Baltic Nationalist Discourse
OPINION | HISTORY | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFAIRS | RED-BROWN COMMISSION
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by Dovid Katz
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East European state-sponsored “Holocaust Fixing” continues apace. The distinguished German scholar and author of a major two-volume work on the Lithuanian Holocaust, Professor Christoph Dieckmann, has given a major interview intended for the general public on the popular Delfi.lt news portal. He was in town for an IHRA conference held in intimate collaboration with the Lithuanian government’s units on the Holocaust and Jewish affairs, including the Red-Brown Commission, of which Prof. Dieckmann is, surprisingly for many of his genuine admirers, a longtime member and apologist.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Germany, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis
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Monica Lowenberg’s Speech at the Protest Outside the Latvian Embassy in Berlin
LATVIA | GERMANY | WAFFEN SS MARCHES IN RIGA | BALTIC MARCHES | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS
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by Monica Lowenberg (London)
The following is an English translation of Monica Lowenberg’s speech that was read out at the protest at the Latvian Embassy in Berlin on 15 March 2017 also addressed by German member of parliament Volker Beck. Ms. Lowenberg could not be in attendance and her speech, published here in the author’s English translation, was read to the assembled by historian Dr. Hans Coppi, chairman of the VVN (Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime in Berlin).
Historian Dr. Hans Coppi (with microphone, center rear) addressing protesters at the Latvian Embassy in Berlin on the eve of the 2017 annual Waffen SS march in central Riga. PHOTO: LOTHAR EBERHARDT.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Germany, Human Rights, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
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German Member of Parliament Volker Beck Joins Protest at the Latvian Embassy in Berlin
LATVIA | GERMANY | WAFFEN SS MARCHES IN RIGA | BALTIC MARCHES | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS
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by Monica Lowenberg (London)
Last Wednesday, on 15 March 2017, eve of the annual events glorifying Latvia’s Waffen SS in the very heart of the capital city, Riga, one German member of parliament (the Bundestag), Volker Beck, came to the Latvian Embassy in the heart of Germany’s capital, Berlin, to give a speech of support to the protesters. Beck, a member of the Greens, is president of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group. The following is the text of his speech, which I have translated into English.
Volker Beck gives a speech of support to protesters at the Latvian Embassy in Berlin on the eve of the 2017 annual Waffen SS march in central Riga. PHOTO: LOTHAR EBERHARDT.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Events, Germany, Human Rights, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
Tagged Latvia, Latvian Waffen SS, March 16th in Riga, Monica Lowenberg, Volker Beck, Waffen SS
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Appeal to Conscience of the “Red-Brown Commission”
[updated]
Appeal to the conscience of the members of the renewed state-financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania”
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", 70 Years Declaration, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Germany, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Pinchos Fridberg, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", Yad Vashem and Lithuania, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Historical Commission (Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust studies manipulated?, International Commision for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Lithuania, Pinchos Fridberg, Yitzhak Arad
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German Group Arrested Trying to Enter Latvia for Peaceful Protest Against 16 March Waffen SS Fest
OPINION | LATVIA | FREE SPEECH | NEO-NAZI MARCHES | RIGA MARCHES | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED
by Florian Gutsche
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RIGA—While Veterans of the Latvian legion of the Waffen-SS are allowed to march on tomorrow’s March 16th “Day of Legionnaires,” a group of antifascists from Germany was arrested while trying to enter Latvia to protest peacefully against the public glorification of the Waffen SS.
MORE COVERAGE HERE
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Germany, Human Rights, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
Tagged Antisemitism in Latvia, Florian Gutsche, Free speech in Latvia, Holocaust in Latvia, Legionnaires Day Latvia, Riga + neo-Nazis, Waffen SS (Latvia)
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In Defense of Transparency at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
O P I N I O N / M U S I C
by Ronald C. Kent
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In January 2012 I became aware of a then-upcoming performance of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since I knew that Carl Orff was a Nazi-approved composer, who created this work in 1936, I wrote a letter to Maestro Andreas Delfs and Music Director Edo de Waart, requesting that they place the biography of Orff during the Nazi period in the program, in the interest of enlightenment, transparency, and full disclosure, thereby situating “Carmina Burana” in its historical context for listeners.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Germany, Media Watch, Music, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Andreas Delfs, Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, Edo de Waart, ILHA, International Labor History Association, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Ronald C. Kent
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Monica Lowenberg’s Speech at Berlin Screening of Juergen Hobrecht’s New Riga Ghetto Film
by Monica Lowenberg
On Sunday 29 June 2014, I had the privilege of participating in the Berlin screening of Juergen Holbrecht’s new documentary film Wir haben es doch erlebt — das Ghetto von Riga. I had translated the English version and done its narration. I was invited to the event by Professor Peter Alexis Albrecht (Frankfurt University) who is also director of the Cajewitz Stiftung and the association for a former Jewish orphanage, today a school, where my father Ernest Lowenberg and his brother, my uncle Paul Lowenberg were given shelter when it was no longer possible for their parents as Jews to work in Nazi Germany.
Posted in Arts, Events, Film, Germany, History, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views
Tagged Holocaust in Latvia, Juergen Holbrecht, Paul Levenbergs, Riga Ghetto, Wir haben es doch erlebt
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European Parliament President Martin Schulz Just Says No to Latest Demands of Eastern “Double Genocide” MEPs
On 14 February 2014, Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, boldly turned down a demand from a group of right-wing East European “Double Genocide” MEPs for the EU to in effect equally ban Nazi and Soviet symbols. Nobody is calling for display of Soviet symbols and the move was seen as another in the long series designed to enshrine Double Genocide — the belief that Nazi and Soviet crimes must be declared equal on all counts — in the European Union.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Germany, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Martin Schulz, Memory Politics in Europe, Prague Declaration (2008), Seventy Years Declaration (2012), Vilnius Yiddish Institute (VYI)
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Film Maker Attempts to Gift New Film on Riga Ghetto to Latvian Embassy in German
The following is the English translation, by Monica Lowenberg, of a letter sent today by German film maker Jürgen Hobrecht to the Latvian ambassador in Berlin.
Dear Mrs. Japina,
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Film, Germany, Latvia, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jürgen Hobrecht
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A Question in Berlin about President Gauck’s Signature on the Prague Declaration
BERLIN—It was reported today that German president, Joachim Gauck, was cited at a 9 December 2013 news conference here about his signature on the controversial 2008 Prague Declaration, that is widely considered to be the foundation document of the “Double Genocide” movement in Europe that seeks to legislate complete equivalence between Nazi and Soviet crimes, thereby downgrading the Holocaust.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Germany, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish Berlin, Miriam Magall, Prague Declaration + Presdent Gauck
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Dr. Clemens Heni’s Writings on the 2008 “Prague Declaration”
At the request of Defending History, Dr. Clemens Heni’s office in Berlin has kindly made available for our readers’ convenience a PDF comprising his writings and presentations between 2009 and 2013 that deal with the 2008 Prague Declaration and its subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) links with contemporary antisemitism. Dr. Heni is author, among other works, of Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin 2013).
The PDF is available here. Dr. Heni’s website: www.ClemensHeni.net.
Posted in Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Germany, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged 2008 Prague Declaration, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide
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Summary Coverage of Berlin Event on Jewish Vilna and the Vilna Ghetto
One-Sided Vilna Ghetto Roadshow in Berlin?
(27-29 Oct)
CINDERELLA NOT INVITED TO THE BALL? Her 92nd birthday was 28 Oct, in the middle of the conference.
Dr. Rachel Margolis, Vilna native, Vilna Ghetto survivor, heroic resistance fighter against the Nazis, co-founder of the Green House Holocaust museum in Vilnius, who rediscovered and published long lost diary of eyewitness to the Ponár massacres, defamed by Lithuanian state prosecutors, is not on the list of speakers in Berlin.
FROM RECENT YEARS: CHEN IVRI APTER, GORDON BROWN, US CONGRESSMEN,LORD JANNER. BACKGROUND. FACT SHEET. RACHEL ON VIDEO. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS.
Meanwhile, in Rehovot, Rachel Margolis prepared to celebrate her 92nd birthday (Monday 28 Oct). PHOTO: HADAS PARUSHContinue reading
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Germany + Holocaust
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