The following news box was posted on page one to the end of 15 April 2012:
Foreign Ministry’s Litvaks?
“Sunflower Litvaks” who “resell” Lithuanian Foreign Ministry “Holocaust history” ran a key PR event Sunday 15 April in the Windy City. Their claim that the Lithuanian Jewish Community was represented is refuted by the actual LJC in Vilnius.
THE LITVAK HERITAGE HIJACKED?
Can history be bought up by even a small state’s nationalist government that has talked itself into the idea that revision of history and wide acceptance of that revision is somehow a national cause? It becomes a serious issue when that state is willing to invest heavily in the enterprise, at a time when the targeted influential foreigners are far from the issues at hand and easily manipulated.
Rabinowitz-Dorf: Did the PR firm sell out Lithuanian Jewry to help the current right-wing government “change” the history of the Holocaust with American Jewish cover, while enabling “Fake Litvaks” to misrepresent themselves as representing the Jewish community in Lithuania?
It seemed to many Vilnius observers this week that Yale historian Professor Timothy Snyder and Yivo director Mr. Jonathan Brent were both “brought” to Lithuania for various events that would, without their foreknowledge, coincide with the week of the Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis glorification ceremonies financed by the Lithuanian government. These ceremonies have now attracted considerable international criticism (see page one).
It was hoped by some in high places, it is alleged, that their presece would deflect international attention from the honoring of the Nazi puppet prime minister (it didn’t), and that their own fabled reluctance to criticize the Lithuanian government unambiguously would in its own way add legitimacy to the controversial events (it won’t).
Background:
Though neither of the two Foreign Ministry Chosen, both painfully controversial among Holocaust survivors and their families, would issue during their stay in Vilnius a public statement on the series of state-sponsored events to honor a Nazi collaborator, Professor Snyder did answer a question about the reburial in a public interview carried by 15min.lt. The question and answer are as follows:
— There is a controversy in Lithuania surrounding the reburial of Juozas Brazaitis, leader of the provisional government, with the support of the government. Do you think it’s a right thing to do?
“I am going to choose my words very carefully here. I think before you rebury anyone, you should think very very hard and probably wait a very very long time because once you rebury somebody once, you can’t rebury them again.”
NOTE: This is an authorized republication of today’s letter, which first appeared in the online Algemeiner Journal. [Update: It then appeared in the AJ’s print edition on 25 May, pp. 2, 4, 5.]
Dear Tim,
Greetings, and sorry we missed each other in Vilnius this time. I write in the context of our ongoing and respectful conversation, which started in the Guardian (thanks to Matt Seaton, and prominently including Efraim Zuroff) back in 2010 (I, II, III, IV); continuing through our meeting at Yale, the Aftermath Conference in Melbourne, Australia, in 2011 (thanks to Mark Baker, and with participation of Jan Gross and Patrick Desbois), and more recently, via my review of your book Bloodlands (along with Alexander Prusin’s The Lands Between), in East European Jewish Affairs.
Last March 11th, Lithuanian Independence Day, when over a thousand neo-Nazi marchers passed the sign for the government’s Jewish Public Library on the capital’s main boulevard, no member of the library’s staff turned up to oppose the neo-fascists, with even a modest, polite sign of disapproval. The march proceeded with official permits and the participation of several members of parliament identified with the ruling coalition. The Lithuanian Embassy in Washington DC failed to respond to a DC based petition that attracted 2,156 signatories, many from Lithuanian citizens.
The following is the text of the statement released today by the signatories enumerated below.
The Soviet occupation of Lithuania is a painful part of its history.
The mass murder of approximately 95% of Lithuania’s Jewish population (noted by historians as the highest percentage of any European country) during World War two is an abomination and blot on the history of Lithuania and its citizenry.
The two events are not equal. Historical sufferings are not identical.
The following letter to the prime minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius, from three members of the United States Congress representing southern California districts was released today to DefendingHistory. The letter is signed by US representatives Brad Sherman (San Fernando Valley, California), Henry Waxman (Santa Monica & Beverley Hills) and Howard Berman (Panorama City & North Hollywood).
The following letter (PDF here), addressed to Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubulius, from US congressmen Brad Sherman, Henry Waxman and Howard Berman was made available today.
The following is a translation into Lithuanian of the letter signed by US congressmen Brad Sherman, Henry Wachman and Howard Berman on 25 September 2012. English original is here. Published Russian translation. Both translations were provided by Jacob Piliansky (Vilnius).
Gerbiamasis, Ministre Pirmininke Kubiliau
This week, one of the more shameful events in Lithuanian-Jewish relations since the Baltic republic regained independence in 1991 will be hosted in New York by the once-venerable Yivo Institute. Under the heading “Reclaiming the Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today,” the Yiddish research institute will host Markas Zingeris, whom it describes as a “Lithuanian-Jewish poet and writer,” to speak about relations between Jews and Lithuanians since the fall of Communism.
- April 2010: The Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff comments (in the Guardian) on the American ambassador’s assurance that “The United States and Lithuania are partners in the fight against antisemitism and in efforts to address the legacy of the Holocaust” bereft of any mention of the “slight problems,” e.g. state-sanctioned neo-Nazi marches on independence day, attempted prosecution of Holocaust survivors, glorification of Nazi perpetrators, disturbing comments by top officials and a general decline into the acceptability of antisemitism.
- Continue reading
Had this title been billed as a simple memoir of Cassedy’s trip to Lithuania in the summer of 2004, my criticism of her book would be tempered. She had gone to the land of her ancestors to study Yiddish at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and to connect with her Jewish roots. The professors and mentors she encounters at the Yiddish Institute come alive, as do the various Lithuanians and Jews with whom she connects. Cassedy is a good writer who captures physical details well. But even at that, this reviewer found the memoir to be superficial.
The major problem is that Cassedy’s book is being promoted as the Bible of the Lithuanian Holocaust by advocates for the current Lithuanian government and elite establishment which aspire to paint for the outside world a distorted version of the Holocaust. A version defined in shades of gray and the confusion they generate. A version that incorporates the mythology of equivalency between crimes committed by the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes.
SEE ALSO THE REVIEWS BY
Dovid Katz in the Algemeiner Journal
Allan Nadler in the Forward
Efraim Zuroff in Haaretz
The following is page 1 of the new (Fall 2012) issue of L’hava — The Litvak Flame, published in New York City by Assistance to Lithuanian Jews, Inc, that is headed by attorney Josef Griliches. The journal is edited by Mr. Griliches and Brian Biller.
Dear Mr. Hirsch,
Congratulations on your selection as judge of the new literary translation contest named for the eminent late Yiddish poet Avrom (Abraham) Sutzkever (1913-2010). News of the contest was today disseminated far and wide (information affixed below, for readers’ rapid reference, and to help inspire more entries in your competition).
Will prosecutors (and the writers’ union) in Vilnius be told about Avrom Sutzkever’s days with the Soviet partisans?
You may know that in addition to being a major twentieth century Yiddish poet and editor, Sutzkever survived the Holocaust by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join the anti-Nazi Jewish partisans. You may or may not know that elderly Lithuanian Jewish Holocaust survivors, who like Sutzkever escaped certain death by joining the partisans, but who are still alive and relatively well, have been defamed as “war criminals” by the same Lithuanian government that recently invested in a Sutzkever plaque in Vilnius, brought over his Israeli family for festivities, and invests in ever more Jewish and Yiddish PR stunts (complete with honors for compliant foreigners) to camouflage a campaign of revisionism.
This is on top of a disturbing toleration of serious antisemitism, including in recent years, state-sanctioned neo-Nazi marches in the heart of the capital city on independence day, the legalization of public swastikas (the UN Human Rights Committee has commented), and inaction regarding front pages of mass circulation newspapers worthy of the 1930s. The most famous examples in recent years are depictions of the Jew and the Gay controlling the world (2009), and, less than a year ago, of one of the city’s resident rabbis.
Remains of 1941 fascist leader Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) met by honor guard at Vilnius Airport on 17 May 2012 and reburied in Kaunas’s Church of the Resurrection on the 20th, as city’s mayor dismisses criticism.SEE ALSO:
Collaborators Glorified section
Previous sanitization program