Yitzhak Arad

When Will the Truth Finally Set Us Free?



O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

I will admit that when I read political analyst Kęstutis Girnius’s comments on the Lithuanian Provisional Government and the Lithuanian Activist Front, and about the supposedly low level of academic research and documentation of these phenomena, I found myself in a state of disbelief that a person whom I consider one of the most sober-minded and most insightful of our political commentators could write this. Without citing his earlier statements on radio and in publications on this topic, here is the link to Kęstutis Girnius’s latest commentary [English translation]:

Continue reading

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Genocide, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on When Will the Truth Finally Set Us Free?

Yitzhak Arad, Survivor, Resistance Fighter, and Major Holocaust Scholar, Wins Book Award in New York City


Dr Yitzhak Arad won a National Jewish Book Award for his new 700 page volume, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (University of Nebraska Press).

The award was presented at the Center for Jewish History in New York on 9 March. Dr Arad, a Holocaust survivor whose family perished, is a veteran of the heroic anti-Nazi partisan resistance in the forests of Lithuania, and the Israeli War of Independence. 

A retired brigadier general and chief education officer of the Israeli Army, he served as director of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for 21 years. He lives near Tel Aviv.  

 

 
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Israel, News & Views, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on Yitzhak Arad, Survivor, Resistance Fighter, and Major Holocaust Scholar, Wins Book Award in New York City

State Prosecutors ‘Visit’ Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day to ask Questions about ALJ chief Joseph Melamed


Officials from Lithuania’s state prosecution service came to the Jewish Community’s premises at Pylimo Street 4 in Vilnius today — during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event — to ask community officials for information about Joseph Melamed, 85, a Tel Aviv resident. The news spread rapidly and caused disquiet among the small remnant community.

Attorney Joseph Melamed, a Holocaust survivor, with his Hebrew book ‘Lita’ (Lithuania) in his office at the Association of Lithuanian Jews on King David Boulevard in Tel Aviv

Mr. Melamed, head of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, possibly the world’s last active Litvak survivor organization, is himself a Holocaust (Kovno Ghetto) survivor, a veteran of the anti-Nazi partisans, veteran of the Israeli war of independence in 1948, a retired Israeli diplomat and a prominent attorney. He is the author and editor of various works about the Lithuanian Holocaust.

Prosecutors told the Lithuanian Jewish Community that they are ‘investigating’ Mr. Melamed in relation to his organization’s publication of lists of alleged local war criminals who are alleged to have participated in the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. A few of the people on these lists are considered ‘national heroes’ by various nationalist elements, especially those who joined the anti-Soviet resistance in and after 1944.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Events, Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on State Prosecutors ‘Visit’ Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day to ask Questions about ALJ chief Joseph Melamed

U.S. Congress Protests Lithuanian Gov. Campaign against Rachel Margolis and other Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi Resistance


On the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Margolis family in the United States released to the media a 3 December 2009 letter from the United States Congress to the prime minister of Lithuania, protesting in no uncertain terms the campaign being waged against 88 year old historian, museum builder and biologist, Dr Rachel Margolis; 87 year old Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute; and 83 year old Holocaust scholar Dr Yitzhak Arad, who was founding director of Yad Vashem. All three have been the subject of ongoing ‘investigations into war crimes’ by Lithuanian prosecutors and of extensive defamation by the country’s mainstream media. Since the saga got underway in the spring of 2006, none has been charged, and not one has been cleared. Holocaust studies specialists increasingly suspect a ruse to create a bogus paper trail of ‘investigations’ of Holocaust survivors as a diversion to the documented history of massive Baltic participation in the Nazi-led genocide of the Jewish population, as well as to the region’s dismal record of not punishing a single Nazi war criminal since independence. See the media coverage; responses to the anti-survivor campaign; critiques of the underlying ‘red=brown’ movement and the state-funded apparatus that underpins it.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on U.S. Congress Protests Lithuanian Gov. Campaign against Rachel Margolis and other Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi Resistance

Hostages to an Ill-Begotten Theory


by Leonidas Donskis

This essay first appeared in Transitions on Line on 10 October 2008, with the following editor’s note: “Lithuanian authorities in late September closed their two-year investigation into the wartime partisan activities of Yitzhak Arad, a Lithuanian-born Israeli historian and a former head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, reportedly on the urging of the European Union and the United States. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to link Arad to possible war crimes committed by Soviet partisans during a 1944 fight with German forces that left many Lithuanian civilians dead. The authorities are still considering whether to put two Lithuanian Jewish women, Fania Brantsovskaya (Brantsovsky) and Rachel Margolis, on the witness stand in connection with the killings.”

It is republished here with Professor Donskis’s permission. For a history of the issue, see our page on the subject of Holocaust survivors defamed by prosecutors.


A disturbing tendency has recently appeared in Lithuania. In the words of the eminent scholar of Yiddish Dovid Katz, this tendency may best be described as the “Holocaust Obfuscation movement.” Its essence lies in subversion of the logic and evidence of the Holocaust, whitewashing or at least selectively reading the history of the Second World War and drastically shifting the roles of victims and evil-doers.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Genocide, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), History, Human Rights, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hostages to an Ill-Begotten Theory

Lithuanian Government’s Holocaust Conference in Jerusalem



by Dov Levin

This opinion piece, under the heading “Lithuanian Hypocrisy” appeared today in Haaretz. It reappears here by permission of the author, Professor Dov Levin of Jerusalem.

Last week I was caught in a debate with myself: whether or not to appear, despite the feeling of nausea, in a discussion with Lithuanian historians, writers and poets at the International Book Fair in Jerusalem. The idea made me so sick that in the end I decided to stay away and I also convinced my friend, former partisan and former chairman of Yad Vashem Yitzhak Arad, to excuse himself from the discussions.

Continue reading

Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Lithuanian Government’s Holocaust Conference in Jerusalem

State Prosecutors Defame Anti-Nazi Resistance Hero Yitzhak Arad while Closing Part of ‘Investigation’; Anonymous ‘Expert Historian’ Attacks Arad’s Book as Public is Asked to Provide ‘Evidence’


While closing ‘part’ of its ‘investigation’ against Holocaust survivor and eminent historian Dr Yitzhak Arad, the Prosecution Service of the Republic of Lithuania issues a public call ‘to the society [public] for assistance’ searching for ‘people who can give evidence or have important information’. More incredibly, the prosecutors’ press release attacks Dr Arad’s famous memoir The Partisan, a classic of Holocaust resistance memoir literature, on the basis of an anonymous ‘Doctor of Humanitarian Sciences (expert-historian)‘. And so, the prosecution service that never achieved the slightest punishment of a single Nazi war criminal in connection with the genocide of 200,000 Lithuanian Jews, leaves for posterity its call to the public for ‘evidence’ against the anti-Nazi resistance hero Yitzhak Arad along with a gutless attack on the scholar’s book based on an anonymous trasher. Perhaps the prosecutors’ mysterious ‘Doctor of Humanitarian Sciences (Expert-Historian)’ will muster the courage to come forward and identify himself for history?

Continue reading

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on State Prosecutors Defame Anti-Nazi Resistance Hero Yitzhak Arad while Closing Part of ‘Investigation’; Anonymous ‘Expert Historian’ Attacks Arad’s Book as Public is Asked to Provide ‘Evidence’

Jewish Community and Union of Ghetto Survivors Speak Out on Harassment of Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Resistance



O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich and Tuvia Jafet

The following Open Letter was published today by the Jewish Community of Lithuania in partnership with the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners.


VILNIUS, 19 JUNE 2008

AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY VALDAS ADAMKUS, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ČESLOVAS JURŠĖNAS, SPEAKER OF THE SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

GEDIMINAS KIRKILAS, PRIME MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ALGIMANTAS VALANTINAS,
PROSECUTOR GENERAL OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

 

The prosecutors of Lithuania do not cease to persecute anti-Nazi Jewish partisans. The Prosecution Service’s claims that “hundreds of witnesses are being questioned” are belied by the fact that only Jewish names are being heard in the media: Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky, Rachel Margolis, and others.

Continue reading

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Games, Double Genocide, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), History, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Shimon Alperovich (1928 – 2014), Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on Jewish Community and Union of Ghetto Survivors Speak Out on Harassment of Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Resistance

Efraim Zuroff Hands the Lithuanian Ambassador a Letter of Protest in Tel Aviv on her State’s Campaign against Jewish Partisan Heroes in Vilnius


At an event today in Tel Aviv the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, hand-delivered a letter of protest to the Lithuanian ambassador to Israel, HE Asta Skaisgirytė Liaukšienė.

Dr. Zuroff’s letter (PDF here, and reproduced in full below from facsimile transmission), in addition to noting the neo-Nazi parade held with police help in the center of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital on March 11th this year, and the ongoing “investigation” against former Yad Vashem director Dr. Yitzhak Arad, emphasizes the shocking events earlier this month, when police in Vilnius came looking for two Jewish women Holocaust survivors and heroes of the Jewish partisan resistance against Nazi Germany, Dr. Rachel Margolis and Ms. Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Double Genocide, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Efraim Zuroff, Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on Efraim Zuroff Hands the Lithuanian Ambassador a Letter of Protest in Tel Aviv on her State’s Campaign against Jewish Partisan Heroes in Vilnius