[last update]
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see also: BOOKS SECTION
Books
Books in the Debate (a DefendingHistory.com selection)
Posted in Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Alexander Gendler (Khurbn), Dan Rabinowitz, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Leyb Koniuchowsky & Jonathan Boyarin, Nazi's Grnddaughter, Ruta Vanagaite & Christoph Dieckmann, Ruta Vanagaite + Efraim Zuroff, Saulius Suziedelis, Silvia Foti
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Autopsy of the Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. Or: How to Subtly Rewrite History
BOOKS | BOOKS IN THE DEBATE | LITHUANIA
REVIEW ARTICLE
by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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Human feelings are now as candles without wick burning from inside.
(from a poem by Avrom Sutzkever, a tribute to Yiddish teacher Yankev Gershtein who perished in the Vilna Ghetto on September 27, 1942 (quote from Rudashevski’s Diary)
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Professor emeritus Saulius Sužiedėlis of Millersville University of Pennsylvania begins this major new book by characterizing its long and productive journey. “This study is the result of years of interaction with historians, journalists, and writers from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the United States, Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Israel. Inspiration and encouragement emerged from discussions among the eleven-member Sub-Commission on Nazi Crimes, part of the Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” (p. vii). Sužiedėlis’s opus on the Jews in Lithuania and their almost complete disappearance during the war years is a meticulously researched, coherently chronicled and impressively documented opus, tackling many themes, issues and problems with a staggering abundance of facts, figures, quotes, opinions, and anecdotes. Chunks of it read almost like an autopsy report on places and massacres rather than on an individual’s remains. I find it overall to be an exceptional, very well written and truly necessary contribution.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Roland Binet
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Crisis War and the Holocaust, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation, Milan Chersonski, Omer Bartov, Prague Declaration, Red-Brown Commission, Roland Binet, Saulius Berzinis, Saulius Suziedelis, Seventy Years Declaration, Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavicius), Yitzhak Arad
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Chris Heath’s ‘No Road Leading Back’ on Ponar and on How we Remember the Holocaust
BOOKS | PONAR | LITHUANIA
BOOK REVIEW
by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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In 2016, Chris Heath read an item in the New York Times about a tunnel that had been discovered “at a Holocaust killing site”. It was referring to
Ponar near Vilna (Yiddish Ponár, Polish Ponary, today’s Paneriai outside Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania). It is around ten kilometers (six miles) southwest of Vilnius city center. This caught his attention and he decided to write a book about this heroic feat. The main title is borrowed from two lines that Shmerke Kaczerginski had written in his poem “Shtiler, Shtiler” (Quieter, quieter) that was put to music and sung in the Vilna Ghetto.
Ponar: 100,000 persons killed by bullets from summer 1941 to spring of 1944, about 70% of them Jews including women, children, and the elderly.
Ponar: List of twelve escapees from Ponar who survived (April 1944): Josef Bielic, Abraham Blazer, Yitzhak Dogin, Yuli Farber, Shlomo Gol, David Kantorovich, Zalman Matzkin, Lejzer Owsiejczyk, Konstantin Potanin, Motke Zeidel, Adam Zinger, Peter Zinin
Posted in Books, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Roland Binet
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Dying a Thousand Deaths: Holocaust Survivors in the Eastern Lands Taken by Hitler in 1941
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]
Posted in Books, Film, History, Latvia, News & Views, Roland Binet
Tagged David Silberman, Frida Michelson, Holocaust in Latvia, Mitchell Lieber, Mitja Michelson, Rumbula, Rumbula’s Echo, Simon Wiesenthal
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A Different Kind of Holocaust Artist: Auschwitz Survivor David Olère’s Unedited and Unabastracted Realism
OPINION | ARTS | BOOKS | HISTORY | POLITICS OF MEMORY
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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I want to share with our readers a remarkable book with reproductions of paintings and drawings by and about David Olère who had been a member of a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But after the war he felt his mission was to bear witness to the truth, including the horrendous scenes he had seen and himself been part of: Vergessen oder Vergeben – Bilder aus der Todeszone by Alexandre Oler and David Olère [= David Oler]; zu Klampen! (Verlag- Springe/Deutschland; originally published in French in 1998 by his son Alexandre Oler: Un genocide en heritage.
Despite the millions of Jews killed by bullets or who died of beatings, pogroms, hunger or ill treatment in Poland and in the Republics of the USSR, the iconic symbols of Nazi evil remain, for a large segment of the world population, the gas chambers and crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the five other extermination camps in Poland. Historians have stressed the fact that the Nazi killers and their helpers sometimes found those mass slaughters by bullets or asphyxiation inside trucks where monoxide of carbon had been injected to be too tedious and harsh to bear for the executioners. So, Nazi Germany switched to mass killings in gas chambers with Zyklon B and – concerned about leaving traces – devised the crematories. Searching for the roots of this industrialization process, Simon Wiesenthal had already come to that conclusion very early (as quoted by Guido Knopp in Die SS – Eine Warnung der Geschichte).
Posted in Arts, Books, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet
Tagged David Olère (Oler) (1902-1985), Holocaust Art, Roland Binet, Sonnderkomando's paintings
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Notes and Updates on Silvia Foti’s ‘The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal’
[LATEST UPDATES]
Silvia Foti: The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal
UPDATE OF JULY 2023: NOREIKA PLAQUE COMES DOWN FOR NATO CONFERENCE. FOR HOW LONG?
UPDATE OF JULY 2022: Foti’s The Nazi’s Granddaughter is reissued with the new title Storm in the Land of Rain
UPDATE OF MAY 2022:
Sylvia Foti’s major new book is widely available in English and Lithuanian, among other languages. QUESTION: Why is the center of Vilnius still blighted by an upgraded plaque & bas-relief (right) and a central boulevard marble slab glorifying Hitler collaborator Jonas Noreika, who masterminded the death of thousands of Jews, and touted his unadulterated hate for Jewish fellow citizens in a prewar book? Why do Western diplomats, and most visiting American, British and Israeli Jewish dignitaries feel obliged to avoid even the most polite critique of these prominent carbuncles on the face of the European Union? Surely, a true friend of Lithuania would want the best for Lithuania and its international stature, even if a small far-right “history rewriting elite” might feel offended.
Posted in Books, Collaborators Glorified, History, Lithuania, News & Views
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Silvia Foti, The Nazi's Granddaughter
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Respectfully Disagreeing with Professor Timothy Snyder
[last updated]
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THE LATEST
Reviews of Bloodlands
Reviews of Black Earth
Instrumentalization?
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This journal holds leading historian Professor Timothy Snyder (Yale University) in the highest esteem, and trusts that this select list of reviews taking issue with aspects of Bloodlands of direct concern to DefendingHistory.com will not be taken amiss. It does not include reviews which have engaged in personal attack or pursued grudges, or which focus on other issues.
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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Australia, Books, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States
Tagged Debates and Controversies on Timothy Snyder and Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder + Bloodlands + Holocaust, Timothy Snyder + Jewish issues, Timothy Snyder + Lithuania, Timothy Snyder Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder on the Holocaust
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Rabbinic Specialist on Divorce Survived Warsaw Ghetto, Went on to Rebuild Jewish Life in Fürth, Germany
BOOKS
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by Yizhak Ahren
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Moshe Nathan Rosenfeld: The Rav of Fürth. The Legacy and Legend of Rav Dovid Kahane Spiro. London 2021, 696 pp., £25.00/ $35.00 + postage. Orders directly from: mnrosenfeld@gmail.com
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Rabbi Dovid Kahana Spiro (1901-1970) was a very pious and learned man who cofounded the Jewish community in Fürth after the Holocaust. He worked there for twenty-five years as a community rabbi and helped numerous people in need. The Firter Rov
(Fürther Rav) was buried in the Har Hamenuchos Cemetery in Jerusalem. A picture of his tombstone can be found in Moshe Rosenfeld’s recently published book on Rabbi Spiro. The book’s thirteen chapters cover in great detail the origins of the family Spiro, their pre-war life in Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto, survival, rebuilding, dialogue with a bishop, divorce cases and much more.
The author, who now lives in London, grew up in Fürth and practically from birth had a close relationship with Rabbi Spiro, who lived next door. Rosenfeld’s mother was the rabbi’s cousin, and his father became his right-hand man. The author frankly admits that he should have asked a thousand questions at the time, but didn’t. And therefore there are many answers that he honestly does not know today. Nevertheless, with a vast amount of work and love, he managed to collect a wealth of material and to publish this extensive work. The history of the Spiro family, that lived in Poland, is presented in great detail.
Posted in Books, News & Views
Tagged Dovid Kahana Spiro, Moshe Rosenfeld
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The Nine Lives of Dónal Denham
BOOKS | IRELAND | NORWAY
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by Steinar Gil
My good friend and colleague for two and a half years in Vilnius, Dónal Denham, has written a book with the title Nine Lives: The Reflections of a Dedicated Diplomat
. The book is an interesting, fascinating read about an eventful career in the service of Ireland at home and abroad, enriched by an excellent selection of photos that add life and substance to the text. The author also draws a vivid picture of his early formative years in Ireland and England and student years at Trinity College. He writes warmly about his family, not avoiding the pain of personal losses, exacerbated by separation and distance. Diplomats from all countries would subscribe to his tribute to his wife Siobhan (“without whom nothing worthwhile would have happened to me”) who “as an unpaid ‘trailing spouse’ was a treasure beyond measure, largely unrecognized by officialdom.”
So, which are Dónal Denham’s nine diplomatic lives?
Posted in Ambassador Dónal Denham, Ambassador Steinar Gil, Books, Ireland, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views, Norway
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Dr. Bubnys’s New Book on the Lithuanian Holocaust: More Obfuscation and Far-Right History-Spin to Minimize Local Participation?
Opinion | Books | Dr. Bubnys & Official State Holocaust Research in Lithuania | Red-Brown Commission | Genocide Center | Politics of Memory | Lithuania | History
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by Evaldas Balčiūnas
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Prolific historian, director of the state’s Genocide Center, and far-right activist. On 23 June 2020, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys addressed an ultranationalist rally celebrating the 79th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion (and onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust), flanked by large posters of Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa, two major collaborators in various phases of the genocide of Lithuanian Jewry (96.4% were killed). In his speech he taunted the (silent) DH observers on hand. See reports here and here, and DH’s section on Dr. Bubnys’s work and positions over the years.
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Arūnas Bubnys’s book The Holocaust in the Lithuanian Provinces (Holokaustas Lietuvos provincijoje, Margi
raštai, Vilnius, 2021) is another publication of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (ICECNSORL). Up until now, books published by the Commission were academically written and appreciated by a sophisticated readership. Moreover, they were always published in both Lithuanian and English. This book is different. It is available only in Lithuanian. Previously published monographs would also include Commission-approved conclusions; this book has no such thing. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Commission’s academics did not discuss the book among themselves before its publication. But let’s start at the beginning.
The book is geographically quite extensive: 23 counties and 140 towns are cited. This is really a lot, but it is also quite obvious that the coverage of towns in different counties is unequal. When it comes to Šilutė county in western Lithuania, for example, several camps and fates of individual Jews are mentioned in passing, but no single town is described. For the Marijampolė county, only the fate of the Jews of Marijampolė itself is presented. Šiauliai xounty (15 towns) and Alytus County (12 towns) are the most extensively covered.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Books, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center in Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Soviet-Nazi crimes commission
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Lipke’s List: Story of an Inspiring Latvian Rescuer Who Risked All to Do the Right Thing
LATVIA | BOOKS | HISTORY | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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Under the Nazis the Jews had not the right to live. Under the Soviets they had not the right to publicly commemorate the victims of the Holocaust as Jews. In the Baltic States the fate of the Jews during World War II had not only been harsh, it had led to over 95% of their population being killed in front of open pits, in the ghettos, in work details, in camps, by bullets, beatings, hunger, exhaustion through work, or by mere sadistic arbitrary acts of killing.
In the sixties, some Jewish activists living in Latvia, mostly in Riga, became interested in recording the history of the Holocaust in their native country by interviewing survivors and preserving the memory of what happened during these terrible times. They had to act secretly because the Soviet authorities and the KGB frowned upon Soviet citizens who considered themselves Jews as well as Soviet citizens.
Posted in Books, History, Latvia, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Roland Binet
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Subtext to June 25th Vilnius Event: Vanagaite & Dieckmann vs. Vanagaite & Zuroff? Hope is for Full Openness on June 1941 and LAF Killers (and Hitler’s Puppet Local Gov.)
OPINION | EVENTS | BOOKS | JUNE 23rd | SURVIVORS REMEMBER “THE FIRST WEEK” | BACKGROUND
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VILNIUS—As ever, debates on the Holocaust in Lithuania take on their own drama, a drama never far from the ongoing alleged revisionism by Baltic governments, not least about the outbreak of local violence, plunder and murder of defenseless Jewish citizens by local “patriots” still glorified as “anti-Soviet heroes” for their unleashing of the Holocaust locally in the first days following the launch of Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. In the Baltics as in (western) Ukraine, thousands of Jews were victimized and killed before the first German soldiers set foot on, or set up their administration in the territories. Far from fleeing some local “rebellion” as mendaciously claimed by state museums and commissions, the Soviet army was fleeing Hitler’s invasion — the largest invasion in human history.
Posted in Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Christophh Dieckmann, Dieckmann, Dieckmann and Vanagaite, Ruta Vanagaite, Vanagaite, Vanagaite and Zuroff, Zuroff
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Yiddish Author Aaron Garon’s New Book to Feature at 20 Feb. Yiddish Reading Circle
BOOKS | EVENTS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY
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by Dovid Katz
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The Vilna Yiddish Reading Circle, now in its twentieth year and open to all, announced today that its weekly session on Wednesday evening 20 February (as usual, from 6 PM sharp at the Vilnius Jewish Community at Mesiniu 3 in Vilnius Old Town) would be dedicated to the just-published handsome book of essays, articles and memoirs by the beloved Yiddish (and Lithuanian language) journalist Aaron Garon (1919−2009). The book, Di yídishe velt fun Vílne (The Jewish World of Vilna) is a collection of some of his Yiddish prose (essays and memoirs) with full Lithuanian translation, published in avant-garde vertical format, designed by the prominent young book-design maestro Greg Zundelovitch. It was brought out by the author’s children, longtime Israeli residents Tamara and Evgeni Garon, thanks to support from the Lithuanian government’s Good Will Foundation.
Posted in Books, Events, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Aaron Garon, Aronas Garonas, Jewish Vilna, Linas Vildziunas, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Milan Chersonski, new books in Yiddish, Sofia Gurevich, Sofia Gurevich gimnazye, The Jewish World of Vilna, Vilnius Jewish community, Vilnius Jewish life, אהרן גאַראָן
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Did Latvia’s Foreign Minister Just Honor an Author for a Book that Spews Antisemitism and “Explains” the Holocaust?
OPINION | LATVIA | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND HOLOCAUST POLITICS | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | BOOKS | ANTISEMITISM
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by Alexander Gilman (Riga)
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Latvia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkēvičs seems to have found a brand new idol and role model — Ludwig Seya, who had been a diplomat in the prewar Latvian Republic for 22 years. For a short time he was a minister, but mostly he held ambassadorships to various countries. After Latvia was annexed to the Soviet Union he taught at the main Latvian university in Riga. In 1944 he was arrested by the Nazis for underground activities in the Latvian Central Council, a union of pre-war politicians and intellectuals who tried to persuade the West to insist on the independence of Latvia after World War II. After being liberated from the concentration camp on the territory of Poland, Seya was arrested by the Soviet military authorities and sent to a Stalinist gulag.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Books, Collaborators Glorified, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Latvia, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Lithuania’s Ambassador in Washington Tells Audience of Ruta Vanagaite’s “Russian Connection”
EVENTS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | BOOKS | PIRAMÓNT CEMETERY | LITHUANIA
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by Josh Cohen (Washington DC)
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As anyone who has been following events in Lithuania for the last several years surely knows by now, the country sports street names and monuments honoring locals who collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two. It was in this context that I attended an event in Washington, DC yesterday at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute discussing Ruta Vanagaite’s controversial book “Our People” (it appeared in Lithuanian in 2016) that blows open the door describing the true extent of Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust. Vanagaite and her co-author Efraim Zuroff , director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, spoke at the event.
Posted in Books, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Josh Cohen, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rūta Vanagaitė, United States
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Josh Cohen, Kennan Institute (Wilson Center), Lithuanian Embassy in Washington DC, Lithuuanian-Jewish relations, Piramont, Rolandas Krisciunas, Ruta Vanagaite, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vanagaite + Zuroff
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Books in the Debate to Late 2017
[updated]
In the Debate to Late 2017
YEAR OF PUBLICATION VARIES.
See DH’s BOOKS SECTION
Andriukaitis (reviewed by Vasil)
Bankier [Kuniuchowsky Collection] (reviewed by Zuroff)
Berlin (notice of appearance in Defending History)
Bubnys (reviewed by Katz; by Vasil)
Cassedy (reviewed by Katz; by Nadler; by Zabludoff; by Zuroff)
Posted in Books, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Algimantas Liekis, Arunas Bubnys, Ellen Cassedy, Himka & Michlic, Karen Sutton, Laima Vince, Mink & Neumayer, Vytenis Andriukaitis
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Academic Studies Press Launches ‘Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism’ (JCA) Edited by Clemens Heni
EVENTS | BOOKS | MEDIA WATCH | ANTISEMITISM | CLEMENS HENI
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BERLIN—As the first issue of Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA) rolled off the presses this week, there was widespread hope that the field of Antisemitism Studies, particularly in Europe, had achieved a notable and reinvigorating breakthrough. What with the entanglements of “larger politics,” both anti-Israel politics in Western Europe, and Holocaust-revisionist politics in Eastern Europe, and right in the midst of populist movement ascendancy and the new east-west Cold War with Putin’s dictatorial and dangerous Russia, the field has long been stymied in Europe. One major factor has been the unhelpful attitude of some of the major European institutions (and at times, even Western embassies in Eastern Europe and major Western organizations) that have covered for antisemitism by arranging “staged” events that cover up for the current issues rather than address them. Finally there is a journal whose inaugural issue’s message from the editor makes clear that it will break the lame taboos of recent years in the field.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Books, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Academic Studies Press, anticosmopolitanism, Antisemitism Studies, Clemens Heni, Historikerstreit, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA), Prague Declaration (2008), Timothy Snyder
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Harvard Publishes “Catalog of the Leyzer Ran Collection in Harvard College Library”
BOOKS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE
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VILNIUS—As the first small shipment of Harvard Library’s new book, Catalog of the Leyzer Ran Collection in the Harvard College Library arrived this week in the Lithuanian capital, there was widespread satisfaction that at least a tabulation of the contents of Leyzer Ran’s extensive archive of Jewish Vilna is finally available. The collection was bequeathed to Harvard University where the Library maintains it as a distinct entity with its own name, space, and now, a handsome catalogue brought out by Harvard University. Leyzer Ran (1912-1995) is widely considered to be the primary postwar chronicler of the centuries-old unique Jewish civilization of the city known in Yiddish as Vílne, Yerusholáyim d’Líte — Vilna, Jerusalem of Lithuania. The newly appeared catalogue was compiled and edited by Dr. Charles Berlin, who is Head of Judaica at Harvard Library and Harvard University’s Lee M. Friedman Bibliographer in Judaica.
Posted in Books, Leyzer Ran Section, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Charles Berlin (Harvard), Davina Ran, Dovid Katz, Faye Ran, Jerusalem of Lihtuania, Justin Cammy, Leyzer Ran, Mordechai Zalkin, Ruth Wisse, Vilna, Vilna Jewish Studies, Vilnius Jewish history
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Linas Vildžiūnas’s Review of Rūta Vanagaitė’s ‘Mūsiškiai’ Now Available in English Translation
BOOKS | POLITICS OF MEMORY
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by Linas Vildžiūnas
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The following English translation, by Laurynas Vaičiūnas, of Linas Vildžiūnas’s review of Rūta Vanagaitė’s Mūsiškiai appeared today in New Eastern Europe (as PDF).
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A book review of Mūsiškiai (Ours). By: Rūta Vanagaitė. Publisher: Alma littera, Vilnius, 2016.
What makes Rūta Vanagaitė’s Ours (Mūsiškiai) very different from all other Lithuanian books on the Holocaust is that it was from the start written as a bestseller. Written by an experienced public relations professional as an appeal to the Lithuanian public, the book raises the painful issue of historical responsibility. The author does not refrain from giving a personal twist to the story (it would be impossible otherwise, as the Holocaust is an issue of individual position and individual responsibility). The author is piercingly direct and uses black comedy. She approaches the topic with composure and a sense of supremacy. These two features may irritate the reader. However, she is entitled to it as she aims to confront the reader, which she so eloquently achieves.
READ MORE. AS PDF.
Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, Linas Vildziunas, Musiskiai, Ruta Vanagaite
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Simon Malkes Perpetuates Memory of Vilna Rescuer Karl Plagge
MEMOIRS | BOOKS | HISTORY
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by Simon Malkes (Paris)
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SIMON MALKES
I was born in 1927 in the city whose official name was then Wilno, Poland (historically Vilna, today’s Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania). When I was fourteen, the Nazis took over the city, began murdering its Jewish population and set up the Vilna Ghetto. My own survival is due to my having been taken as a teenage repairman of German military vehicles at the plant known as HKP (Heereskraftfahrpark or Army Motor Vehicle Repair Park) on Subotsh Street (today’s Subačiaus). That one enterprise was under the directorship of Major Karl Plagge (1897–1957), a righteous gentile who did everything he could to protect as many Jewish workers as possible from the huge murder machine. Famously, shortly before the Nazi flight from the Soviet army in the summer of 1944, he gave a coded warning to his workers about a need for imminent escape.
Posted in Books, France, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views
Tagged HKP Camp, Holocaust memoirs, Major Karl Plagge, Simon Malkes, The Righteous of the Wehrmacht
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