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15 April 2024

Vilnius Jewish Community invites people of all faiths and backgrounds to Rabbi Samuel Jacob Feffer’s Open & Free Passover Seyder, celebrating the Jewish festival of freedom

this Monday, 22 April, 9 PM to late, at the

Narutis Hotel, Pilies g. 24 (ground floor, hall at end of corridor)

Everyone is welcome! Admission free! No tickets required! More information at Facebook page of the Vilnius Jewish Community . . .◊

April 2024

Greetings — from ‘Lithuania’s Liveliest Cemetery’

Did “Conference of European Rabbis” (CER) reverse a long-held principled position after alleged financial incentive from gov. sponsored ‘Good Will Foundation’ (GWF) in latest betrayal of Lithuanian Jewry by the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) point man who allegedly arranged the deal? He is also the nonrotating co-chair of GWF controlling tens of millions meant for Lithuanian Jewry.

RECENT HISTORY OF THE DEBATE

Do the leaders and supporters of the AJC know of its unethical and destructive activities in Lithuania over many years? How AJC’s Andrew Baker responds to a Lithuanian Jew who dares write in protest?

On the future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery: To date, just one member of latest “international commission” on the cemetery stood up with integrity for the cemetery’s dignity, and could not be swayed by junkets, banquets, photo-ops, translations, medals and trinkets. His statements for history on the process and on the content. Who are the other members? Will any of them — especially the “religious” Jewish representatives — ever speak out?

Real Lithuanian tradition rabbis have spoken out with simple integrity. Statement of four yeshiva heads, and of Rabbi Elchonon Baron.

Tale of Two Visions — for Lithuania’s most sacred Jewish site, the Old Vilna Cemetery, where many thousands still lie buried

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HUMAN RIGHTS INCLUDE THE RIGHT OF THE DEAD TO BE LEFT IN PEACE

EQUAL RIGHTS INCLUDE THE RIGHTS OF MINORITY CEMETERIES (ESP. MINORITIES DECIMATED BY GENOCIDE) TO ATTRACT THE SAME STATE GUARDIANSHIP AND DIGNITY AS THOSE OF THE CHRISTIAN LITHUANIAN MAJORITY

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March 2024

Welcoming Springtime in Vilnius with Ever More Repairs at Library of Sciences

BUT STILL NO ANNOUNCED DECISION ON FUTURE OF CENTRAL VILNIUS SHRINE TO HITLER COLLABORATOR J. NOREIKA. A SHRINE WITH A RECENT STORIED HISTORY. ONE OF A NUMBER OF PUBLIC-SPACE SHRINES IN VILNIUS GLORIFYING LOCAL HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS.

Ever more antics to avoid having to permanently remove plaque glorifying the Nazi collaborator (or just to delay announcing any decision)? National Library of Sciences in central Vilnius on the eve of the Ides of March 2024. Defending History photos by William Adan Pahl.

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Critics ask: Is it all to avoid making the bold decision to leave the plaque and bas relief of Noreika away from the building’s facade and right on the junkpile of Hitlerist paraphernalia — where it justly belongs?

“These repairs, approaching the one-year mark, are the Vilnius answer to Chris Christie’s Washington Bridge repair scheme”…

Plaque was temporarily removed on eve of last July’s successful NATO conference (according to mainstream media, it was given to far-right hate group Pro Patria for “safekeeping”). New American ambassador speaks out with unambiguous moral clarity at the start of 2024. Nu? What keeps the president, prime minister and mayor of Vilnius from proudly announcing that just like Soviet junk, public space shrines to Holocaust criminals have no place in the public space of EU and NATO capital cities. One mayor once took down its predecessor plaque (alas, very temporarily). On Vilnius’s 700th last year, Defending History assured our readers that Gediminas, creator of Europe’s first truly from-the-start multicultural capital, was crying out from the grave.

Meanwhile, hated relics of Soviets’ architectural (and human) barbarism are all correctly coming down, with the one exception of the one on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, where demolition would entail the “danger” of restoring Lithuania’s most storied Jewish cemetery in the onetime Jerusalem of Lithuania.

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It pays to defend history: success stories

Our authors: Who has written for DH during its first decade and a half?

Our survivors’ Yiddish oral history archive reaches 670+ videos

DH editor in the neo-nazi, far right & fellow traveler imagination: cartoons, photoshops and death threats

Can well-meaning distinguished foreigners become UJIs (“useful Jewish idiots”) who unwittingly help cover for East European Holocaust obfuscation and revisionism when showered with honors?

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February 2024

America’s new ambassador in Vilnius, HE Kara McDonald, makes a dramatic entrance that will go down in history, citing glorified Holocaust perpetrators Krikštaponis and Noreika by name, in first major interview:

“I will continue to speak out strongly against the glorification of individuals who are known and documented to have participated in the Holocaust. This is part of the definition of antisemitism.”

New US ambassador in Vilnius HE Kara McDonald

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THE INTERVIEW ON BNS/LRT

AMBASSADOR MCDONALD’S FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE: Hope rising that the ambassador can succeed to persuade authorities to truly join West’s sensibilities in their imminent decision on…

To restore or not to restore a city-center plaque glorifying a brutal Holocaust collaborator? Noreika or no Noreika?

Plaque was taken down “for repairs” before last July’s NATO conference. Choice rich in symbolism confronts nation’s leaders as huge white builders’ sheet continues to cover up the indecision…

DefendingHistory.com photo by William Adan Pahl

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Doesn’t the proud 1000 year history of Lithuania deserve better than this in the heart of Vilnius?

Can a handful of antisemitic, ultranationalist, Holocaust-revising elites continue to stymie Lithuania’s progress?

The day will come, when the nation’s educators, journalists, parliamentarians and cultural leaders will appreciate who were the true friends of Lithuania in the 2020s. . .

Coming back? Plaque with bas relief of the Holocaust collaborator. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

For a decade and a half, the Defending History community has been calling for an end to glorification of Holocaust perpetrators. See DH’s sections Perpetrators Glorified; J. Noreika. The far-right’s argumentation, that “Double Genocide” means that all perpetrators can also be heroes has been propagated for a quarter century by the “Red-Brown” Commission. It’s best-known iteration is on video, concerning the state’s attempts to prosecute anti-Nazi resistance heroes Fania Yocheles Brantosvsky, Rachel Margolis, Joseph Melamed, and others; official apologies to their families remain a vital issue. Defending History is proud to have brought these travesties to the world’s attention, and to have supported to the hilt the last survivors. Our community is certain that this constitutes a great service to the future of the delightful, democratic EU/NATO state of Lithuania, whose valiant people deserve much better than their taxes going to glorify Holocaust killers, or to rewrite history in the spirit of the far-far right’s ultranationalism, racism and antisemitism.

Mark Blumberg on the Noreika plaque merry-go-round

Jan. 2024

Defending History’s 2024

Person of the Year

Julius Norwilla

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Meet our Persons of the Year over the past decade

Dec. 2023

We wish all our readers

Happy Holidays, Happy Chanukah, Happy Christmas, Happy New Year 2024!

The Defending History community’s annual new year’s meditation

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Dec. 2023

Grand opportunity knocks: Don’t restore the Vilnius plaque glorifying Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika!

Before New Year’s Eve rings out the 700th anniversary year of Vilnius: Defending History renews call for rapid removal of all of Vilnius’s shrines, plaques, statues, street names and museum exhibits glorifying Holocaust collaborators (including the LAF neighbor-killers of the First Week of the Lithuanian Holocaust)

B’nai B’rith Australia & New Zealand award: “DefendingHistory.com stands as the pre-eminent record of historic truth in the face of well funded state efforts to rewrite history”

Nov.-Dec. 2023

Vilnius’s Ruta Bloshtein begs Orthodox Jews appointed to commission on Old Vilna Cemetery to stand up to ‘directed conclusion’ — a fancy restored 1970s Soviet building in the cemetery’s center. Rabbi Elchonon Baron calls latest project for cemetery destruction ‘despicable’. Julius Norwilla issues a final appeal to all members of the commission. Four Top Lithuanian-heritage heads of yeshiva issue clear rabbinic edict. Rabbi Baron issues another. Latest from ‘Working Group’ is ‘right out of Orwell’

Please write to members of the “Working Group” on the moral imperative of removing the huge Soviet ruin and lovingly restoring Vilna’s grand Old Jewish Cemetery with its many magnificent stone structures

“History will hold to account each and every member of the Working Group, including addiction to junkets, photo ops, translations, grants, honors and glories, for enabling the cruel humiliation of the graves of tens of thousands of Jewish citizens of Vilna over half a millennium whose cemetery has no true local descendant-defenders because of something called the Holocaust. Who knows, more of the Working Group will end up with classy state medals too. But their names will remain in the accurate history until the end of days.”

“Cemetery restoration” planned for one of Lithuania’s most sacred Jewish sites?

The frightening imagined image that so disgusts antisemites in town: the idea that A Cemetery Is A Cemetery, that the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery is the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, not a convention or memorial center, not a museum or fun & recreation park…

What would be a magnificent world attraction for a European city — a restored medieval Jewish cemetery reflecting a grand history — seems to elicit deep, primal ultranationalist and antisemitic panic in Vilnius. Time for the prime minister to step in again?

Were allegedly compromised groups possibly manipulated to provide “Jewish cover” for de facto cemetery destruction? Focus on AJC, CPJCE, LJC. Previous steadfastness of Conference of European Rabbis (CER) now unclear as “clear new statement” awaited. Follow the dramatic saga in Defending History.

Julius Norwilla explains that the “Working Group” members may not know that other hated Soviet buildings have rapidly had their “landmark status” removed to enable demolition. But the one in the Jewish cemetery…?

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QUESTION for the Working Group members: Would any of this be happening to a half-millennium old Christian or Lithuanian national cemetery where many thousands still lie buried?

QUESTION for the planet’s Litvak rabbis and Litvak leaders: Who will be among the First Ten to publicly say something along the lines of “Sorry, guys, but the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery is just no place for a museum or other renovated Soviet monstrosity. A cemetery of any people is for those buried there, to lie in peace in the plots purchased freehold by their relatives, with nothing but restored gravestones on top. Not just Jewish law, it’s part of human rights of all people, dear khévre.”

NOV. 2023 UPDATE: RABBI ELCHONON BARON, HEAD OF A LITHUANIAN-TRADITION YESHIVA IN JERUSALEM, IS FIRST TO PIERCE WALL OF PUBLIC SILENCE

☰ Who will be the second? ☰

Autumn 2023

Roland Binet: On the Unvarnished, Unedited Holocaust Art of David Olère

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‘It Pays to Defend History’: Yad Vashem’s new chairman, Dani Dayan, gives watershed speech at Lithuania’s parliament

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Emily Tamkin’s JTA report on Vilnius’s twin anniversaries: 700 years since city’s founding, 80 since end of the Vilna Ghetto

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Pinchos Fridberg’s latest reflections

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B’nai B’rith honors Lithuanian filmmaker

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Lev Golinkin (in the Forward) on more Nazi-honorinng monuments in America

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New books for autumn 2023

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August 2023

B’nai B’rith Australia & New Zealand Honors Saulius Beržinis, Lithuanian Film Maker, Bold Fighter for Historic Truth of the Holocaust

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THE INTRICATE SAGA IN THE BACKGROUND

B’nai B’rith Australia & New Zealand issues press release; on J-Wire; archived

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Summer 2023

Lithuania’s Famed Documentary Film Maker Saulius Beržinis, Pioneer Truth Teller on Holocaust in the Baltics, Under Multipronged Assault

Over three decades, survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators alike have been inspired by Saulius Beržinis “not to leave this earth before speaking the whole truth into his camera.”

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Feelings mount on alleged “gang-up” by Sheduva Shtetl Museum, its executive director in Brussels, the South African billionaire in Zurich, and swish lawyers in Vilnius. “Kosher” Hollywood master is brought in to produce an uncontroversial replacement film.

“Forbidden” scenes in the film Petrified Time have become known informally as The Satanic Verses

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For a decade and a half, Defending History has been proud to stand with the inspirational heroes of modern Lithuania: the bold truth tellers of history (of all personal backgrounds). In summer 2023, documentary film maker Saulius Beržinis, after near-miraculously filming the last witnesses to the Holocaust in Sheduva (Šeduva), finds that powerful forces (including a Brussels macher, a Zurich billionaire, various officials, and Vilnius’s most ellexist law firm) all stacked up to prevent these ‘satanic verses’ of the film entering the public domain of Western civilization. Defending History intends to ensure that the Sheduva truth, a microcosm of the East European Holocaust, is not suppressed — museum or no museum. And that master documentarian Saulius Beržinis is acclaimed for his achievements rather than be subjected to strongmen-commanded, billionaire-financed campaigns of destruction actuated via fancy law firms. A major Hollywood documentary master has been brought in to do a replacement film that will presumably not ruffle the local, national or regional feathers.

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Latest updates on

‘The Satanic Verses of Lost Shtetl Sheduva’

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16 June 2023

FILM ON THE SHEDUVA HOLOCAUST, WITH EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY OF THE LAST WITNESSES TO THE GENOCIDE OF SHEDUVA’S JEWS, NOW ONLINE FREE UNTIL 22 JUNE

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Lithuanian cartoonist Voluvak on whether in the internet age film footage of real significance for the historic record of Western civilization can be eaten up (“catch and kill”) before ever seeing the wider light of day.

May 2023

Full translation of public antisemitic proclamation by Lithuanian parliamentarian Žemaitaitis; Will he now resign?

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Mark Blumberg on new Noreika shrine circus: down for NATO conference (“for repairs”) & back up again when folks leave town?

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With all Soviet monuments (rightfully) knocked down in Vilnius, will they make a single exception for the one in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

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Will the French Embassy in Vilnius finally deal with the “private French bookshop” (in the heart of the French Embassy compound) that has for years featured in the center of its prominent Old Town show window far-right works intent on glorification of local Holocaust collaborators?

◊April-July 2023

Vilnius Celebrates its 700th Birthday: Time to Take Down the City-Center, State-Financed, Public-Space Monuments that Glorify Local Holocaust Collaborators

Some of the state-sponsored public-space shrines to local Holocaust collaboration in Vilnius in 2023, year of the city’s 700 years celebrations. Top: Vilnius street offensively named for the most tragic day in Lithuanian Jewish history: outbreak of mass murder of helpless neighbors across the land (the Soviets were fleeing the Nazi invasion, not the local Jew-killers). Montage: DefendingHistory.com

Meanwhile, an antisemitic commemorative envelope (featuring “numerous crowds of Kaunas Jews” allegedly greeting the Red Army in Kaunas during World War II) “updated” for this year’s celebration of Vilnius’s 700th birthday, purchased in Vilnius Old Town’s central tourist souvenir district (Pilies St.) on Easter Sunday, 9 April 2023:

See more samples of the same “genre” and the related saga of 2012 (which includes a fine Delfi.lt exposé by a young Lithuanian journalist, and a bold protest staged by nine young Lithuanian human rights champions at an exhibition of the “art” of the envelope maker)

April-June 2023

Latest Shenanigans for the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (Shnípeshok, today’s Šnipiškės)

After the Defending History led campaign to thwart the “national convention center on top of the Vilna Jewish cemetery” culminated in success, powerful forces continue to try to “save” the unsightly ruin of the Soviet Sports Palace built in the cemetery’s center, this time around via plans for a “Jewish museum.” See the latest in Defending History.

Reminder: There is not one Jewish museum, Jewish center, or Jewish institution on the planet built on top of an old Jewish cemetery, among other reasons because this is strictly forbidden by Jewish law, and any such misguided endeavor would be ipso facto shunned or boycotted by traditional religious Jews, and many other people, Jewish and non-Jewish, in solidarity with their millennial sensibilities, and in harmony with universal humanistic respect for the rights of the deceased to be left in peace and respected, which is a right now enumerated by the US Congress and the European Union, among others, as part of universal human rights.

March-April 2023

Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, dean of New York’s Rambam Mesivta High School, leads over 100 students on a peaceful demonstration outside the Lithuanian Consulate in Manhattan (also in Matzav.com; European Jewish Press)

March 2023

March’s Marching Season in the Baltics: Latvian & Lithuanian worshippers of Hitler’s henchmen continue to be gifted the centers of Riga and Vilnius…

The Holocaust in Latvia: Amid a general silence over this year’s shameful March 16th central-Riga worship of the Latvian Waffen SS, the Defending History community honors Roland Binet for his years of activism and superb musical compositions in remembrance of the victims and protest of celebrations of Hitlerist forces. Binet is a master of original music composition as a voice of historic protest.

Julius Norwilla’s eyewitness report of far-right’s march in central Vilnius on 11 March 2023

Journey to Lithuania and Poland in May 2023

February 2023

16 February 2023:

Happy 105th Independence Day, Lithuania!

We all join in celebrating February 16th 1918, just 105 years ago, that ushered in the successful interwar republic. Classic image of the Jews of the shtetl Dorbyán (Darbėnai, northwestern Lithuania) in 1928 celebrating the tenth anniversary of the happy day so cherished by all the peoples in the land. . .

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Also: In 2018, to honor the 100th anniversary of independence, we established the (still slow moving) Mini Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania

February 2023

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on How Minorities’ Bravery in Defending Ukraine is Changing Some Attitudes in Lithuania

Review of Michael Kretzmer’s documentary “J’Accuse”

January 2023

Roza Bieliauskienė (1946 – 2023)

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Roland Binet Reviews New BBC Documentary on the Onset of the East European Holocaust

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on Image of Roma in Ukraine in Light of Heroism in War

Evaldas Balčiūnas Reflects on his Life

New Year’s Day 2023

Defending History’s 2023 Person of the Year is Announced…

Evaldas Balčiūnas (photo: Defending History)

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Who were Defending History’s previous People of the Year?

TO ALL OUR READERS:

Happy New Year 2023!

The Defending History community’s annual new year’s meditation

December 2022

Last Days of “Kaunas 2022 Capital of European Culture”

and

the shocking “omission of the main point” in Jerusalem Post’s coverage

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Roland Binet on Latest Example of Baltic Revisionism Seeping Westwards

November 2022

We mourn the sudden and untimely death of our dear colleague, mentor and teacher

PROFESSOR MICHAEL SHAFIR

(4 January 1944 — 9 November 2022)

PHOTO: CAROLE LEMEE

The entire Defending History community mourns the untimely sudden death of the great Holocaust historian, who was editing his book on the East European revisionist campaign, and its many Western and Jewish nochsheppers, in his final months. Inspired by Randolph L. Braham (1922-2018), among others, Professor Shafir’s papers covering the whole swath of East European governments’ huge investments to “fix” the Holocaust made him the pioneer of the academic and intellectual resistance to state-sponsored Double Genocide revisionism. May his completed book and all his other writings soon be made accessible to scholars and the public alike. His works will live on and in time come to be recognized for their successful exposure of the vast and elaborately financed efforts to obfuscate the Holocaust.

Papers by Michael Shafir

Michael Shafir section in DefendingHistory.com

November 2022

A one-sided event at Yale and the Fortunoff Archive in New Haven on 9 Nov. 2022? Speakers are long-time members of the Lithuanian government financed “Red-Brown Commission” that is a prime engine of the Double Genocide revisionist movement in Europe

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London Jewish Chronicle reports on last wish of 100 year old Holocaust survivor and heroic partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky: Preserve for posterity Europe’s last Jewish fort from Holocaust times! (background; 100th birthday and list of videos)

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John Oxley’s ‘non-Critical’ piece in ‘The Critic’ Magazine: Some PR for Europe’s most antisemitic and far right revisionist museum — Vilnius’s ‘Genocide Museum’ that turns Hitlerist Holocaust perpetrators into ‘gallant heroes’. The DefendingHistory.com community views of the museum.

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Yet again, Holocaust revisionism commission puts on a macabre show for naive foreign Jewish visitors in Vilnius

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October 2022

Julius Norwilla on Lithuania’s overdue spiritual analogue of: “Russian warship go f**k yourself!”

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Roland Binet on latest attempt to export Baltic revisionist Holocaust history to Belgium and the West

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Defending History on stream of ‘useful idiots’ brought to legitimize Kaunas’s ‘Capital of European Culture’ year without removing a single state sponsored, city-center public-space shrine to Holocaust collaborators (and to actual local perpetrators)

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Will the state-sponsored ‘Red-Brown Commission’ in Vilnius ever apologize for its public role in defamation of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance and are heroes of the free world? (background)

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Will ‘liberal professors’ (and tolerance-loving students!) ever call publicly for removal of shrines to Hitler’s Nazi puppet PM in Kaunas from Vytautas Magnus University lecture hall? (background)

Sept. 2022

Vilnius Cinderella Comes to the Ball (belatedly, and in Berlin)

German Wikipedia now tells the tale of Lithuania’s Rachel (Rokhl, Rochel) Kostanian, who for decades led a one-woman campaign in Vilnius for truth about the Holocaust, standing up to some very powerful forces. Photo: Rachel in Berlin with Thomas Pfanne, former German cultural attaché in Lithuania, after she was honored by the president of Germany. See Defending History’s Rachel Kostanian section.

Sept. 2022

Defending History Turns 13

On our pages TEN YEARS AGO

It pays to defend history: success stories

Our authors: Who has written for DH during its first dozen years?

Our survivors’ Yiddish oral history archive reaches 670 videos

DH editor in the neo-nazi, far right & fellow traveler imagination

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Aug. 2022

We Honor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky on her 100th Birthday

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky near the bunkers where she lived and fought the Nazis (from Sept. 1943 to July 1944), at the “Jewish Fort” in the forest outside Vilnius. The fort is rapidly sinking into the earth and disappearing from the face of European history, and urgently requires rescue. It is widely considered “a unique European symbol of the human will to survive against all odds.” Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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We join Fania in calling for preservation of Europe’s last Jewish partisan fort in the forests (“Fania’s Fort”), where 100 Jewish escapees from the Vilna Ghetto lived and fought the Nazis during the Holocaust as part of the anti-Nazi resistance. The fort in the forest, which should become a major Lithuanian, Baltic, UNESCO, Jewish Heritage and European Union site to be cherished, is rapidly disappearing because of far-right history revisionists in high positions.

There is also an urgent need to ask the Lithuanian government to issue a written apology and retraction following a decade and a half of defamation for the history books, a defamation that has included a formal statement from the executive director of the state-sponsored “red-brown commission” that also runs Holocaust studies in the country.

See Defending History’s Fania Brantsovsky Section and some of our videos with dear Fania over the last 25 years

August 2022

Are Leaders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania ‘Taking Advantage’ of Ukraine Tragedy? They Call on EU to Support Far-Right Holocaust-Obfuscating ‘Prague Platform’

July 2022

President Zelensky Dismisses Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany after Shameful Public Worship of Stepan Bandera, a Major Holocaust Collaborator

See G. Rossolinski-Liebe’s authoritative study of Bandera’s Hitlerist history and the racist, fascist leader’s inspiration of hundreds of thousands of murders of Polish and Jewish civilians. Erika Solomon’s update in the New York Times

Defending History was ahead of curve; see from earlier years Bandera section and some of Dr. Rossolinski-Liebe’s earlier writings in Defending History; DH’s Collaborators Glorified section for the wider context of the issue in contemporary Eastern Europe (more details on Sections page)

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February–August 2022

Civilized World Condemns Putin’s War of Barbaric Mass Murder in Ukraine

The Defending History community joins in calling for immediate restoration of peace and security for all the people of Ukraine, condemning unequivocally the savage and barbaric invasion — and rain of death and destruction — by a neighboring big power, led by our century’s most dangerous and deranged warmonger dictator.

As a small gesture of spiritual solidarity, our Yiddish Studies team has constructed a modest new collection of videos of Ukraine’s last Yiddish speaking survivors. Ukraine alone spans every modern dialect of the language.

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June 2022

Israel’s Prof. Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky, During Recent Visit to Vilnius, Boldly Spoke Out in Mainstream Media (Lrt.lt) on State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators

in Lithuanian & in English

Related: Defending History’s Collaborators Glorified section. See also sections on 23 June 1941 (and its public-space commemoration), J. Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis), A. Baltūsis-Žvejas, J. Lukša, J. Noreika, A. Ramanauskas (+ New Britain, Conn. saga), K. Škirpa, J. Žemaitis.

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Professor Klibansky is a major contemporary scholar of the history of Lithuanian Jewry. His book on Lithuanian yeshivas has just come off the press…

June 2022

Uh-Oh, Here We Go Again: Secret Memorandum on Future of Vilna Great Synagogue Courtyard

UPDATE: DH Publishes the memorandum, commissions full translation

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Just in: Concern in official “Lithuanian Jewish Community” circles about possible 7-year insinuation of alleged Putinist (with potentially dangerous influence over English language website and comms, and community’s leadership). Refers to Ukrainian victims of barbaric Putin invasion as “fascists” (in a country where over 70% voted for a Jewish president in the last election…). More here and here. English readers: sample here.

27 May 2022

Happy 60th Birthday to our Staff Writer Evaldas Balčiūnas, Unique Lithuanian Ethicist

A major unheralded truthsayer of our times

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Lithuania’s most intrepid pursuer of historic truth and its defense. A decade ago, his series “Why Does My Country Honor Murderers?” included his 2012 revelation to the English speaking world on the Holocaust collaboration of “national hero” Jonas Noreika. From 2014 onward he was for years dragged into court in a prosecutorial campaign of kangaroo hearings and harassment. Defending History stood with him with pride. Today his work (selection in English) is sometimes undercredited elsewhere. But not here. Happy Birthday Evaldas!

Evaldas Balčiūnas at the Vilnius court where he was repeatedly harassed for telling the truth about local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators. Defending History came to each and every hearing to provide support. After years of harassment he was found ‘not guilty’…

May 2022

Another ‘World Litvak Congress’ in Vilnius

Efraim Zuroff’s critique in The Times of Israel

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Why is this Photo on Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry Website So Disturbing?

Julius Norwilla in Defending History

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Is a New Book by Director of Vilnius ‘Genocide Center’ & Published by ‘Red-Brown Commission’ a Tool for Far-Right East European Holocaust Revisionism?

Evaldas Balčiūnas in Defending History. Online German version

Background on Genocide Center: DH section & page; review of its museum in Tablet

Background on “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania” (ICECNSORL or, as dubbed by Vilnius diplomats for brevity: The Red-Brown Commission): DH page & section

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To mark Yom Hashoah 2022, Lev Golinkin releases new edition of epic study of some 1500 shrines (in some 30 countries) honoring Nazi collaborators

Lev Golinkin in the Forward

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Is New York City’s Jewish Museum the Latest Western Jewish Institution to be Duped into “Legitimizing” East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism?

Michael Casper in Jewish Currents. Report in the Jerusalem Post.

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102 Year Old Lithuanian Jewish Holocaust Survivor Explains Why May 9th is Still Precious

Yetta Gurvich reflects (Yiddish video). Part of LYVA (Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive).

April 2022

New Digital Video Archive of Survivor Testimonies from Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine (& Northeastern Poland) Passes the 650 Video Mark

March 11 and 16:

Even this year, Latvia and Lithuania permit city-center far-right, collaborator-glorifying marches that idolize Holocaust collaborators:

David Pugliese in the Ottawa Citizen on Latvia’s Waffen SS glorification event

Julius Norwilla in Defending History on Vilnius’s far-right city-center event

Feb. 2022

February is “Can you imagine?” month…

Can you imagine a museum in South Africa dedicated to the history of Apartheid without a single on-site African member of staff on site?

Can you imagine a museum in Mississippi of Slavery without a single on-site African-American member of staff?

Can you imagine a museum of Lithuanian shtetl history in Lithuania without a single on-site Jewish member of staff?

Yes, it’s the Lost Shtetl Museum in Sheduva (Šeduva), Lithuania.

Will it tell the truth about who (exactly) massacred the Jews of Sheduva?

Will it reveal its “top secret” multimillion-dollar donors of a massive new building and complex in town? Transparency is paramount when it comes to Jewish history on ground zero of the East European Holocaust.

Evaldas Balčiūnas has published an outline for his play: Museum of the Lost Truth.

Are South African, Russian or other anonymous tycoons again being duped by slick Lithuanian government operatives?

See also DH sections on Sheduva; Museums; and unique, exclusive recordings of the amazing Christian Lithuanian Yiddish speaker and Holocaust truth teller of Sheduva, Elena Rimdžiūtė (video; clip; article).

Someone has to defend history and ask the hard questions. That’s us. Thank you for your support.

Jan. 2022

Kaunas — EU Capital of European Culture for 2022

Will city’s leaders finally remove state-sponsored public-space shrines, sculptures & street names glorifying local Hitlerists who helped annihilate city’s 30,000 Jews in the Holocaust?

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LEVINAS MELEE

Composer and pianist Michael Levinas, son of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, publicly protests Lithuania’s naming an institute in Kaunas for his father. Op-ed in Le Figaro (in English). Interview in Actualité Juive (in English).

“The question on everybody’s mind” is: Will the Levinas Center leaders, staff, sponsors and visitors politely ask that the city of Kaunas now, in its year as “Capital of European Culture” rapidly remove state-sponsored shrines to the local murderers of Levinas’s family and the other 30,000 Jewish citizens of Kaunas? Or will the Levinas Center become one of the “Useful Jewish Idiot Addresses” that are used to cover for current policies of glorification of Nazi perpetrators and defamation of local dissidents?

SEE THE LATEST ON DH’S

LEVINAS CENTER MEDIA TRACKER PAGE

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LEVINAS FOR VETERINARIANS?

PS: Seems that a Levinas-named entity deemed not suitable for Vilnius University’s Faculty of Philosophy, just the “Health Sciences” unit (Medical School & Veterinary Univ.) in Kaunas, during the era of the Ramanauskas Year, the Lukša Year, & Kaunas Capital of European Culture, all of which glorify Kaunas’s Holocaust enablers.

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Takes on Kaunas 2022 in the wake of Nazi shrines abounding in town (and the university): Arndt Beck; Thomas Pfanne; Dovid Katz

The plaque with bas-relief glorifying the prime minister of Adolf Hitler’s puppet government in Kaunas. That “provisional government” collaborated in the sudden and total dehumanization of the city’s 30,000 Jewish citizens. It still adorns a lecture hall in his name at the city’s Vytautas Magnus University. There is also a matrix of street names and public-space exhibits glorifying the Holocaust’s perpetrators. Will the EU politely call for their removal as Kaunas becomes “Capital of European Culture” or are these the EU’s lax new standards for elementary European values? See the reactions when the Nazi puppet PM was reburied with full honors nearly a decade ago.

Jan. 2022

Who are Defending History’s 2022 Persons of the Year?

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Dec. 2021

Sad Setback for Vilnius’s Standing in the West

City Council opens brand new square named for alleged 1941 Holocaust murderer Juozas Lukša (“Daumantas”) in spite of pleas and testimony from the (late) last Holocaust Survivors who provided evidence. Council members tell DH off the record: “What do you want, this was a grand compromise with the Jews, not to make the square in the old town or city center!” (citing far-right demands for the square to be opposite the Jewish Community building).

See Defending History’s chronology of the 2021 debate, including links to Alex Faitelson’s book, British Parliament members’ 2012 early day motion, and 2021 calls from World Jewish Congress’s Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, the Jewish Community of Lithuania, and (very unusually) the American Jewish Committee. See essays by Defending History’s Dovid Katz and Evaldas Balčiūnas.

Testimony identified Mr. Lukša as one of the participants in the beheading of Rabbi Zalmen Osovsky of Slabodka (before the arrival of German forces) and as a participant in the Kaunas Lietukis Garage Massacre.

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LATEST NEWS

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Dec. 2021

‘It pays to defend history!’

Town Council of Zedelgem, Belgium, Decides to Dismantle Offensive ‘Beehive’ Monument to Latvia’s Waffen SS

ROLAND BINET REPORTS

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Dec. 2021

Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive Passes 500 Video, 12,000 View Milestone

Online for the first time: 30 years of Holocaust Survivor testimonies from Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine

Yoel Matveyev’s coverage in the Yiddish Forward (Nov. 2021)

Survivor testimonies and linguistic and cultural interviews, all in Yiddish, videographed mostly in situ from 1990 to 2020

Excerpts of testimonies on the launch of the Lithuanian Holocaust in the week of 23 June 1941; in Latvia

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Oct. 2021

Roland Binet on the Road Sign Welcoming Visitors to Zedelgem, Belgium’s Town with the Nazist Waffen SS Monument

Evaldas Balčiūnas on the Holocaust in Šeduva, a Town in Northern Lithuania

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26 Sept. 2021

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on Roma Issues in Lithuania

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Sept. 2021

Defending History Turns 12

Founded on 6 Sept. 2009. Emailed circulars and reports from May 2008 were then uploaded making for a record starting in 2008, A dozen years of posts provide a unique record.

Quiz: How many and which authors have published in Defending History?

ON OUR PAGES

10 years ago. 7 years ago. 5 years ago. 3 years ago

Contributions in the United States are now fully tax-deductible via the new nonprofit Preserving Yiddish and Defending History.

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Sept. 2021

Congratulations Start to Pour in to Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė on 16 Aug. Cancellation of Vilnius Convention Center in the Cemetery (“CCC”)

Agudath Israel of America leads the way (18 Aug. statement; 25 Aug. Jewish Tribune)

Deans of three top Lithuanian yeshivas, all named for cities in Lithuania, congratulate PM

Lithuania’s prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė “just did the right thing” (Getty Images)

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During mid-August lull, many were caught unaware (reports in DH, DH Updates, Algemeiner Journal, JTA)

Vested interests (commercial and ultranationalist/antisemitic) quickly ensnared Vilnius mayor and city council to demand reversal

Rumors (still uncorroborated) spread of plans by usual “gov. Jewish unit” for another “quisling and UJI [‘useful Jewish idiot’] conference” to cloud the issues and cover for “slow-motion rollback” of PM’s bold decision. That trick had (Sadly) worked back in 2007-2008 when leading American Jewish scholars were lavishly brought to a “committee” to cover for building “just the second green building” on top of the cemetery (still known locally as the “D.E. Fishman Building”), on the “understanding” that no more would ever be desecrated with commercial projects…

From the history of the saga

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26 Aug. 2021

Silvia Foti in the Wall Street Journal (26 Aug. 2021)

(as PDF)

SEE MORE IN BOOKS

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25 August 2021

In Shock to Admirers, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius Calls for Reversing Gov’s Cancellation of ‘Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery’

Question: Is this how he wants to o down in the 700 year and counting history of Vilna (Vilnius/Vílne/Vilna/Wilno)?

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18 August 2021

All welcome in Malát (Molėtai), Lithuania, on

Sunday 29 August

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16 August 2021

Success! It Pays to Defend History!

Bravo to Lithuania’s Gov on Decision to Move Convention Center Project away from Old Jewish Cemetery

Lithuanian mass media: top journalist Arvydas Jockus reports in Alfa.lt

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SEE FULL REPORT

BEN COHEN IN THE ALGEMEINER

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DH’s coverage of the Vilnius cemetery saga: Look at it chronologically, or work back from the most recent…

RUTA BLOSHTEIN’S HISTORIC PETITION

COMPELLING WORK BY LITHUANIAN INTELLECTUAL ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS

AND A MYSTERY LITHUANIAN ARTIST WHOSE DRAMATIC CARTOONS HAD A PROFOUND IMPACT

THE INDEFATIGABLE CAMPAIGN OF DOV-BER AND CHAYA FRIED OF NEW YORK CITY. MR FRIED’S EARLY ARTICLES IN DH.

MAJOR LITVAK RABBINIC LEADER HORAV ELCHONON BARON SPEAKS OUT TO LITHUANIAN AMBASSADOR IN TEL AVIV. HIS VIDEO AT WESTERN WALL.

DH’s coordination of international opposition. Some highlights

Other Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe must be saved from mercenary corrupt clutches of London’s CPJCE and complicit cowardice of US gov’s USCPAHA

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Augusat 2021

Danny Ben-Moshe’s Documentary Film Rewriting History Now Free on Youtube

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“Nearly a decade later it’s more relevant than ever”

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As a matter of Interest…

Which American Jewish leaders and Western academics would “adjust” their views of the Holocaust after getting medals, trinkets, photo-ops & assorted glories from East European governments hooked on Holocaust revisionism (governments that crave Western/Jewish silence — abject silence — on state glorification of local Nazi collaborators)?

for example

Some major, city-center glorification of Nazi and Holocaust Collaborators — in August 2021

*Photographic selection. Lev Golinkin’s international survey.***

August 2021

Playwright Marius Ivaškevičius’s in-depth videotaped interview with DH editor Dovid Katz:

Now Online

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August 2021

Harvard’s Prof. Alan Dershowitz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery:

“Beyond raising a compelling constitutional issue, this resolution is wrong as a matter of justice, historical preservation, basic decency and the dignity of the dead.”

Prof. Alan Dershowitz

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July 2021

Roland Binet’s New Musical Composition on the 80th Anniversary of the Outbreak of the Baltic Holocaust

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June 2021

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Photo-Op Starved Officials of US Taxpayer Funded “USCPAHA” (with State Dept. “Special Holocaust Envoy”) on Vilnius Visit; Triumphant Images are Tweeted

But did they even bother to meet with Ruta Bloshtein, author of the international petition calling on the Lithuanian government to move the national convention center project away from the sacred old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery? Her office, in the Judaica section of the national library, is a short walk from their gov. meetings. Petition has 53,500 signatures to date. History of the US taxpayer-funded commission’s role in the affair. Meanwhile international opposition to desecration of the old Jewish cemetery grows apace. And on the Holocaust? Not a word of critique of state projects to glorify the local perpetrators on the eve of the 80th anniversary of 23 June 1941, when the Lithuanian Holocaust broke out. Land of “tweeted photo-ops fix all”. . .

23 June 2021

June 23rd 2021: 80th Anniversary of the Outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust

When “white-armbanders” and LAF followers began to injure, plunder, humiliate and (in 40 locations) murder thousands of Jews across Lithuania (before arrival or taking-of-control by the first German forces). And who will honor the real Lithuanian heroes of 1941 — the amazing, inspirational folks who saved a neighbor from the LAF and the Hitlerist hordes?

Will the state and its “history” units finally honor the victims or again perpetuate the far-right pro-fascist false history that this was some minor crossfire in a “great revolt against the Soviets”? The Soviets were fleeing Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history — not the local white-armbanded Jew killers.

A freedom fighters’ revolt? Hitlerist white-armbanders surround Jewish women being marched to their death. These militias, responsible for deaths of Jewish civilians in forty locations in Lithuania prior to German arrival, are honored by the state as “freedom fighters”….

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Another “conference to paper it all over” adorned by “useful Jewish academics” from far and wide?

6 May 2021

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Yitzhak Arad, Hero of Jewish Partisans in Forests of Lithuania, and in Israel’s War of Independence, a Major Holocaust Scholar, Dies in Tel Aviv at 94

Yitzhak Arad (1926-2021)

Holocaust revisionist who started the campaign against Arad in 2006 (in interview in the antisemitic Respublika representing state’s “Genocide Center”) is today the nation’s Minister of Defense.

Arad was first Jewish partisan veteran to be libeled by kangaroo prosecutions of Lithuania’s “history fixing” units attempts to revise Holocaust history. Major effort was to paint victims as perpetrators and perpetrators as victims. Follow the ins-and-outs in Defending History.

In 2012, Dr. Arad reported that Yad Vashem (under Israeli Foreign Ministry pressure) had refused to publish his own paper on Holocaust revisionism in Lithuania and asked for it to appear on the pages of Defending History.

For decades he was the leader of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. But when, in retirement, the Lithuanian assault got underway, he felt betrayed and abandoned by Yad Vashem (and after some early support) by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Neither seriously demanded the needed letter of apology (still doable for posterity).

OUR REPORT

22 April 2021

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In “Shameful” Decision Lithuanian Parliament Appoints Glorifier of Holocaust Collaborators as Director of State’s “Genocide Center”

Secret ballot: 76 for, 34 against,8 abstentions, 2 spoiled ballots

Defending History Reports on Nomination

“No, Sir. This is No Photoshop”

Algemeiner Journal is first US publication to cover the news

Earlier: On the Bubnys nomination. In the Algemeiner Journal. On Dr. Bubnys’s record. The state-sponsored Genocide Center. On glorifying collaborators.

Addressing a group of far-right and neo-Nazi devotees on 23 June 2020, Dr. Bubnys proudly speaks under a banner of two notorious Hitler collaborators, Jonas Noreika (see Silvia Foti’s new book) and Kazys Škirpa. The 23rd of June 1941 is the date remembered by Lithuanian Jewry as the outbreak of the Holocaust with onset of widespread murder, dehumanizing degradation and humiliation of civilian Jewish neighbors by the “white armbanders” and “LAF” forces (whose pamphlets declared explicitly their plans for their nation’s Jewish citizens). But instead of honoring the victims, the state’s far-right historians-in-tow glorify the perpetrators as “anti-Soviet rebels,” a well known historic nonsense: the Soviet army was fleeing Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, the largest invasion of human history, not the local Jew-killers with their white armbands. More on the historic background.

Tension mounts: How will Lithuania’s government (and its state-sponsored historians and “foreign Jewish leaders in tow“) mark the eightieth anniversary two months from now, on 23 June 2021?

14 April 2021

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Milan Chersonski

1937 – 2021

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From his dozen years as editor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s former quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania

His writings over the last decade in Defending History

His 80th Birthday celebration in Vilnius

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15 April 2021

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Historian Who Poses Proudly with Posters of Holocaust Collaborators is Nominated to be Head of Lithuania’s State-Sponsored Far-Right “Genocide Center”

“Why does Lithuania keep doing this to itself?”

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, chief historian at the state sponsored “Genocide Center” proudly glorifies June 23rd 1941 (on June 23rd 2020 — pandemic or no pandemic…) under the visages of Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika (left) and ethnic cleansing advocate K. Škirpa in central Vilnius. Photo: Julius Norwilla

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OUR REPORT. SEE ALSO DH SECTION ON DR. BUBNYS AND STATE HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM IN LITHUANIA

April 2021

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Silvia Foti’s The Nazi’s Granddaughter Has Appeared

The Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrator’s Chicago-based granddaughter has told the whole truth about her grandfather, J. Noreika. But meanwhile, in central Vilnius, a flashy new plaque (erected less than two years ago) continues to glorify the collaborator, who helped organize the destruction of thousands of Jewish citizens. As the 80th anniversary of the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust, 23 June 1941, rapidly approaches this June, the question arises: Will the government (and its sycophants) again be honoring the perpetrators on this day, or, at long last, the victims? Last year, the chief historian of the state-sponsored “Genocide Center” stood proudly before a neo-Nazi banner glorifying two major collaborators (including Mr. Noreika…).

Defending History has been on the Noreika case for 9 years. For years on end our correspondent was lugged into court with kangaroo prosecutions. Scroll down to May 2014 to read more.

Meanwhile, Kaunas’s Vytautas Magnus University continues to feature a lecture hall named for, and adorned by a bas relief of a second major collaborator, the Nazi puppet prime minister of 1941. Hopefully the city of Kaunas will remove all its shrines to Nazi collaborators before being named a “capital of European culture” in 2022. See Lev Golinkin’s sweeping expose, earlier this year, of the wider issue of glorification of Holocaust perpetrators internationally.

As fate (or Vilna geography) would have it, the shameful new plaque honoring Nazi collaborator J. Noreika faces the sad sight, across the river, of the Old Jewish Cemetery that authorities want to use for a new national convention center.

April 2021

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We need your support to stop the current tidal wave of East European Holocaust revisionism

(that often progresses with the de facto underpinning of American Jewish organizations whose leaders are addicted to “Glories and Medals in the East”

Support for Defending History is now fully tax deductible

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Danny Ben-Moshe’s film Rewriting History is again online!

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Come see our latest reports…

Defending History is no fly-by-night. On our pages…

10 YEARS AGO 7 YEARS AGO

5 YEARS AGO 3 YEARS AGO

6 April 2021

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All Welcome at Yom Hashoah Event Featuring DH Editor Dovid Katz

in international discussion of Danny Ben Moshe’s film Rewriting History

Tuesday 6 April 2021 at Midday US Eastern time (5 PM London, 7 PM Israel and Baltics)

Admission free but registration required

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March 2021

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Roland Binet on

The Monument to Latvia’s Hitlerist Waffen SS Divisions in a Town in — Belgium

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Passover songs in the Lithuanian Yiddish tradition

March 2021

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Joel Lion, Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Boldly Slams Latest Municipal Honor for Nazi Collaborators

Ben Cohen reports in the Algemeiner

March 2021

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‘My Heritage’ and ‘Litvak SIG’ Announce Availability of Millions of New Jewish Genealogical Records

Collection from the Lithuanian lands covers the period from Catherine the Great to the Holocaust. Report in the Jewish Chronicle.

Feb. 2021

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Cinderella finally comes to the ball

President of Germany Awards the state’s Order of Merit to Rachel Kostanian, the “Mother of History Dissidents in Eastern Europe”

“A Powerful Statement”

See: DH’s report; press release from Berlin; recent tributes on Kostanian’s 91st birthday; DH’s Rachel Kostanian Section spanning over a dozen years

Welcome to Defending History!

A safe space that genuinely respects your privacy. No log-ins. No passwords. No offers of notifications or pop-ups. Just read what and when you like. Over a dozen years, we have covered under-the-radar issues that went from obscure to the forefront on the international arena.

The East European far right’s clever and lavishly financed campaign to rewrite, revise, and fix history (with the help of well-meaning naive westerners) is finally under serious challenge. Together we can defend history, and along with it, human rights and dignity (of the living and dead alike), equality, free speech, and the values of free society and liberal democracy.

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The Latest in Defending History

TITLES ONLY

16 February 2021

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Happy Independence Day, Lithuania!

We all join in celebrating February 16th 1918, just 103 years ago, that ushered in the successful interwar republic. Classic image of the Jews of the shtetl Dorbyán (Darbėnai, northwestern Lithuania) in 1928 celebrating the tenth anniversary of the happy day so cherished by all the peoples in the land. . .

12 February 2021

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Viktorija Kazlienė, Internationally Admired Director of Molėtai (Malát) Regional Museum in Lithuania, on Developing Holocaust & Jewish Cultural Memorials in Region

— Based on Historic Honesty, Intercultural Cooperation, and Bona Fide Reconciliation

Viktorija Kazlienė

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See DH section on the unique role of Moletai (Malát) and its region in ongoing Holocaust and Jewish cultural commemoration in Lithuania and beyond over the past five years

February 2021

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February Flare-Up of Holocaust Polemics in Lithuanian Mass Media:

1: Defending History’s take on the sunshine boy “heroes” — perpetually silent until all are in any case slamming an obscure parliamentarian (or the far-right, antisemitic Genocide Center) for the usual Holocaust falsification.

2: The naming of 2021 for an alleged perpetrator of LAF atrocities against the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) in June 1941.

February 2021

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Lithuania’s Liveliest Cemetery (Piramónt – Šnipiškės)

1. Aliide Naylor’s “Soviet Modernism’s Enduring Baltic Legacy” in Jacobin.

2. Latest: US Commission’s P. Packer, silent on the cemetery his commission is responsible for, finds other things with which to make himself an American Jewish hero.

3. Julius Norwilla warns of the dangers of “illusory progress” on saving the Old Vilna cemetery.

4. Christian News Journal claims State Dept. and US Embassy shift to clear new stance on the old Vilna cemetery’s preservation.

6 February 2021

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HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY TO VILNIUS’S BELOVED

Professor Joseph Parason

(Josifas Parasonis)

27 January 2021

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Holocaust Remembrance Day Leads to Veritable Battle of History

Silvia Foti in the New York Times

Public historical debate and coverage of East European state efforts to “fix the narrative” and export the revisionism to an unsuspecting West.

Lev Golinkin’s survey (and interactive map) in the Forward of monuments to Nazi perpetrators in Eastern Europe, and increasingly in the West, makes ample reference to Defending History’s role in bringing these issues to the world’s attention over the last dozen years.

Efraim Zuroff slams Israeli foreign minister’s betryal of Holocaust history. See DH’s Israel chronicle page.

Dovid Katz on the need to politely confront the major state actors, not just convenient small-fry outrages.

31 January 2021

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Warm Good Wishes Pour in For Rachel Kostanian on her 91st Birthday (31 Jan. 2021)

For decades the spirit of life and leadership at Vilnius’s legendary Green House. See Defending History’s Rachel Kostanian section. Her best-known book is Spiritual Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto (with preface by Sir Martin Gilbert).

January 2021

Israel’s Ambassador Joel Lion in Kiev

Israel’s Ambassador Joel Lion in Ukraine Boldly Condemns Annual Parade Glorifying Holocaust Collaborator Stepan Bandera; JTA’s Cnaan Liphshiz Reports

But at same time, Israeli Foreign Ministry colludes to silence dialogue on glorification of Holocaust collaborators in Lithuania (including the “naming of 2021”); Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Zuroff protests in Jerusalem Post

Lithuanian Parliament’s dedication of 2021 to memory of J. Lukša, alleged Kaunas 1941 killer is little mentioned after early protests by WJC’s Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, and Yakov Faitelson, son of legendary escaper from Ninth Fort. Defending History’s take, chronology of the debate, and alternative dedication of 2021. Even the usually hesitant official Jewish community, and its AJC partner, spoke out

SEE HISTORY OF ISRAELI GOV’S STANCE ON THE ISSUES; 2017 “LOWPOINT” IN ISRAELI DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

Dec. 2020 — Jan. 2021

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Vilma Fiokla Kiurė: Updates on Women’s Issues in Lithuania

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Defending History’s Persons of the Year 2021

Dovid Katz on Uniqueness of the First Week of the Lithuanian Holocaust (on its 80th Anniversary)

“Commemorate Victims and Savers, Not Perpetrators”

Andrius Kulikauskas Reports: Major Success in Campaign to Save Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Convention Center Desecration; Follows up with BNS Press Release

Lithuanian Parliament Nixes Convention Project’s Budget for 2021

Julius Norwilla conceived this Star of David as a symbol of fellowship for November 1, 2020, the traditional day for visiting cemeteries throughout Lithuania. From left: Andrius Kulikauskas, Ruta Bloshtein, Povilas Birbilas, Vanda Birbilienė and Julius Norwilla stand in front with a bag of stones. Edmundas Kulikauskas and Arkadij Kurliandchik stand on the bank of the Neris with the Sports Palace behind them. Photo: William Adan Pahl.

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14 Dec. 2020

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Are US Tax Dollars Really Going for Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators in Ukraine?

25 Nov. 2020

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Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on the Fate of a Roma Boy in Vilnius

Dovid Katz’s lecture on “Writing the Holocaust out of History?” at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne, Australia now on Youtube (PP presentation online)

Defending History’s editor is named to Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life in 2020 at @Algemeiner’s annual banquet (#J100) in New York City. DH’s campaign to save Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery is cited.

Nov. 2020

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Are Authorities in Latvia Trying to Shut Down Riga’s Famous Outdoor Holocaust Museum?

Petition is Launched

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Yakov Faitelson Calls on the Lithuanian Parliament to Reconsider Decision to Name 2021 in Honor of Alleged Participant in Kaunas Atrocities of June 1941

Participation of honoree witnessed in both Kaunas Garage Massacre and the beheading of Rabbi Zalmen Osovsky. See chronology of the 2020 debate. Yakov Faitelson joins protests by Defending History, Dr. Laurence Weinbaum (World Jewish Congress), Rabbi Andrew Baker (American Jewish Committee) and Ms. Faina Kukliansky (head of official Jewish Community of Lithuania).

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Nov. 2020

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“Lithuania’s Liveliest Cemetery”

♦ Prof. Josifas Parasonis of Vilnius, professor of building sciences uses science, common sense and humanity to come to a simple conclusion

♦ Julius Norwilla, head of Committee for Piramónt, exposes huge budget hole being made to put convention center project on top of the cemetery

♦ Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, editor of Respect Cemeteries, calls on readers to write to Lithuanian parliament’s budget masters by Nov. 10th deadline

♦ Next Vilnius District Court Hearing on Fate of the Cemetery is on November 24th

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Eyewitness reports on recent hearings:

1 October Vilnius hearing; 6 Oct. hearing;

Earlier report on stance of European Foundation for Human Rights. Reports in Algemeiner Journal and Jerusalem Post.

Defending History was there…

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Autumn 2020

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Trending in Defending…

♦ Were Lithuania’s President and his entourage and press office unperturbed by large poster of two major Holocaust collaborators at his speech launching a new monument? Flaunted on presidential website…

Does the president’s PR team really want big posters of Holocaust collaborators at his rallies?

♦ Conference of European Rabbis (CER) strips London “grave-trading” CPJCE of authority to meddle any further in fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. What is the CPJCE? International petition approaches 52,000…

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From a series of visuals on the moral future of central Vilnius

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Summer 2020

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Making Heroes out of Holocaust Collaborators: Spreading to the West?

Does Vilnius Really Need ‘Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery’?

Will an EU Member Parliament Really Name 2021 for Alleged Participant in 1941 Kaunas Atrocities?

Tragic Fate of Inspirationally Brave Lithuanian Rescuers

Lithuanian Jewish Commmunity: ‘Concern’ over Appointment of Genocide Center Deputy Head who Specializes in Whitewashing Holocaust Crimes of 1941 Hitlerist LAF and Nazi Puppet Provisional Gov.

US contributions for defending history are now tax-deductible

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″The Power of the Ancient Hebrew Letters”

Arkady Kurliandchik and Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas lead a group in partnership with the Vilnius Jewish Community, in placing stones with Hebrew letters painted in the traditional gold paint (used to highlight lettering in old Lithuanian Jewish / Litvak gravestones) at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės / Shnípeshok), site of the abandoned Soviet sports palace and a planned national convention center. Thousands of graves are still there all around the building. The new gold-lettered Jewish stones were variously placed to mark out the approximate perimeter of the cemetery.

Stone lettering and photos: Andrius Kulikauskas

Vilnius Jewish Community’s Pre-Tíshebov Event at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery on 29 July. More on the event: Andrius Kulikauskas

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Vilnius City Council rushes through decision for convention center with annex in heart of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. Julius Norwilla reports from Vilnius. Rabbi Elchonon Baron reacts from Jerusalem (video).

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MERVYN SMITH MEMORIAL LECTURES

Series of webinars by Dovid Katz on Litvaks, Yiddish, the Lithuanian Holocaust (and the contemporary debates)

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July 2020

Stinging Pain for Lithuanian Jews & Holocaust Survivor Families More Widely, as Seimas Names 2021 for Alleged Participant in June 1941 Kaunas Atrocities

Editor’s take. Chronology of events and publications. WJC’s Dr. Laurence Weinbaum in the Jewish Chronicle. Rare protest from AJC with LJC. But Wiesenthal Center strangely silent for first time…

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6 July 2020

The Defending History community wishes all our readers in Lithuania

A HAPPY CROWNING OF MINDAUGAS DAY

celebrating the Lithuanian king’s crowning in 1253. A wonderful modern holiday for all the peoples of Lithuania, and the world, and especially those with roots in the Grand Duchy…

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26 June 2020

European Jewish Congress Reports on Ruta Bloshtein’s Petition to Save Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Convention Center Project: 51,000 Have Signed to Date

Local, international opposition growing by the day

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25 June 2020

LJC’s Video of Dieckmann-Vanagaite 25 June Book Launch

THE BACKGROUND. RECENT BOOKS IN THE DEBATE

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23 June 2020

Chief Historian of State Sponsored Genocide Center is Key Speaker at Events Glorifying June 23rd; Evening Event under Banner of Two Holocaust Collaborators

Defending History was there to monitor the events. Julius Norwilla’s photo gallery.

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, chief historian at the state-sponsored Genocide Center in Vilnius and long-time member of the state-sponsored “International Historical Commission” proudly appears under the banner of two heinous Holocaust collaborators, J. Noreika and K. Škirpa, at an event glorifying the day, 23 June 1941, that murder and mayhem broke out against the country’s defenseless Jewish citizens.

Škirpa with Hitler in Berlin

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23 June 2020

Remembering June 23rd 1941: Why Would Anyone in the EU Want to Celebrate the Outbreak of the Baltic Holocaust under Guise of “Rebellion”?

Outbreak of mass murder, injury, pillage and humiliation of defenseless Jewish neighbors by the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) and others before arrival of first Nazi forces. Soviet forces were fleeing Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa — not the local Hitler allies. The real heroes of the day are Lithuanians (and Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians and others) who risked everything to just do the right thing and save a neighbor from these Hitlerist organizations…

Defending History’s section on June 23rd events & issues in previous years. Background on the history. New English edition of Leyb Koniuchowsky’s compendium of testimonies now available online.

Online town hall on European Holocaust Denial is organized in the US. All welcome

Here in Vilnius: Lithuanian parliament (Seimas) schedules 10:30 AM (Vilnius time) press conference. Fears rising that this will be yet another effort to glorify June 23rd and the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust at the hands of the LAF, provisional gov. and assorted other local Hitler allies. Speakers include members of Seimas, Genocide Center and Red-Brown Commission…

Far Right Will Honor Nazi Collaborators on 23rd at 6 PM in central Vilnius. Defending History will be there to monitor the event

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Late Spring 2020

Who’s Gonna Welcome Folks to a Convention Center in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

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Dramatic Developments for Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Still Slated to Become Vilnius Convention Center

Petition by Ruta Bloshtein, Vilnius native and resident, reaches 51,000 signatures. Defending History reports. Bloshtein’s articles.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo receives multifaith plea from Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim leaders and key human rights organizations.

Two new websites launched: Save Vilna (US and Israel) and Respect the Cemetery (Vilnius); Both efforts entail Christian-Jewish (& Lithuanian-Litvak) alliance. Vilnius project announces 14 June public event. Latest report by Andrius Kulikauskas.

Elected chairman of Vilnius Jewish Community, representing vast majority of Lithuania’s Jews, reaffirms VJC’s firm opposition to desecration of the cemetery.

UCSJ joins the endeavor from Washington DC.

Defending History has been on the case for “five long years” and helped inspire international opposition to a convention center that would never be sited in an old cemetery of the majority religion population. See the latest.

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TThe Latest

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BOOKS IN THE DEBATE

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June-July 2020

Will the Lithuanian Defense Ministry add a “health warning” to its page glorifying a Nazi collaborator?

Lithuania’s Defense Ministry magazine glorifies Nazi collaborator and Holocaust cheerleader Kazys Škirpa on its front cover and in a massive article. See reactions from the Lithuanian Jewish Community and G. Gochin’s Times of Israel blog, and Defending History. SEE OUR REPORT.

Incredibly, the Defense Ministry still flaunts the cover on its website (as PDF).

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May 2020

Tale of the “Euronote Vilnius Cemetery”: See DH, JTA, AJ

Disturbing video produced by a national tourism agency

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May Day in Vilnius: Three major tourism federations united to finance the covering of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery with empty chairs with symbolic 1000-euro notes pasted on (directly above extant graves), symbolizing the economic loss from not rushing ahead with a convention center in the middle of the cemetery. The 500 year old cemetery, where thousands of citizens of Vilnius lie buried is not mentioned.

Real or photoshopped?

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Solidarity with Minorities in Time of Pandemic?

Some use period for further glorification of Holocaust collaborators; Some tout postcrisis economic renewal from “Convention Center in the Cemetery” Project in Vilnius

Former foreign minister calls on present FM to renounce views and support state glorification of brutal Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika (after supreme administrative court confirmed during national lockdown the “hero status” of the same collaborator).

Also: Defense Ministry still adds no disclaimer to its page glorifying Nazi collaborator.

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Meanwhile:

“You can’t make this up”: Major economist headlines construction sector revival via Jewish cemetery’s desecration as panacea for Covid-19 doldrums. Then, major national tourism units unite to place a thousand chairs with symbolic euro-notes on top of Vilnius Jewish graves.

Judith Leister reports in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Julius Norwilla in DH.

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For news in Lithuanian, see VieningaLietuva.com

5 YEARS AGO IN DH

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March 2020

BALTIC FAR RIGHT’S “MARCHING SEASON” AGAIN GLORIFIES HITLER’S COLLABORATORS

VILNIUS + KAUNAS ON 16 FEB: DH eyewitness report on 16 February march in Vilnius. Organizers again targeted DH staff; 16 Feb in central Kaunas.

VILNIUS 11 MARCH: DH’s report on the run-up. DH’s eyewitness report of the event.

RIGA 16 MARCH: West silent as central Riga again gifted for worship of Latvia’s wrtime Waffen SS on Monday March 16th; Coronavirus ban on rallies results in individuals laying wreaths for Waffen SS at city center’s Liberty Monument

February-March 2020

Linas Vildžiūnas, Lithuania’s Leading Humanist, For Decades Key Educator (and Truth Teller) about the Holocaust, Wins Donskis Award for Tolerance

16 February 2020

Defending History Alone Monitored Torchlit Vilnius Old Town Far-Right March that Glorified Nazi Collaborators J. Noreika and K. Škirpa

9 February 2020

Doyen of Litvak Rabbis Signs Impassioned Decree on Saving Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from “Convention Center in the Cemetery” Project

BOOKS IN THE DISCUSSION

Alexander Gendler: Khurbm: 1914-1922

Leyb Koniuchowsky & Jonathan Boyarin: The Lithuanian Slaughter of its Jews: Testimonies of 121 Survivors of the Holocaust in Lithuania

Dan Rabinowitz: The Lost Library

Ruta Vanagaite & Efraim Zuroff: Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust

Ruta Vanagaite & Christoph Dieckmann: How Did It Happen? (Our People, Part II. Understanding the Holocaust in Lithuania)

January 2020

Far Right Again Granted Central Vilnius on Feb. 16 Independence Day

They plan to glorify Nazi collaborators Škirpa, Noreika and Brazaitis

Scene from their 2018 march in the heart of Vilnius (featuring on front banner six Nazi collaborators)…

2018 march in central Vilnius. Photo © DefendingHistory.com

January 2020

European Foundation for Human Rights: Progress in Case for Equal Minority Rights for Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

For the first time a member of the Lithuanian parliament challenges the wisdom of glorifying (and reconstructing) an ugly Soviet dump that was built on Jewish bones of the centuries. See Kęstutis Masiulis’s new piece in the Lithuanian media. Also, progress in the Vilnius court case is reported in the media, citing comments from Prof. Josif Parasonis. In the report, Turto Bankas (the state’s “property bank”) falsifies history, claiming the unsightly Soviet ruin is outside the cemetery. In fact, the American Embassy confirmed years ago (see point 5) that it “The Sports Palace property indisputably rests in the middle” of the historic cemetery.

Don’t the people of Lithuania (and Europe) deserve a sparkling new and morally clean Vilnius convention center rather than a Soviet-era structure surrounded by five centuries of Jewish graves?

Clemens Heni in Times of Israel on recent Yad Vashem furore

Matt Rubenstein in The Battleground EU: “Changing the Historical Record”

David Pugliese in the Ottawa Citizen on East European Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators

Julius Norwilla in Vilnius’s 7MD on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Clemens Heni in Times of Israel on dissident thinkers in Germany

**Anna Shternshis in Canadian Jews News on Yivo Librarian Debacle (see also DH’s take; list of items approved by “In geveb”)**

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23 January 2020

VIDEO: Major Litvak Rabbis in Israel and American Christian Evangelist Meet with Lithuania’s Ambassador to Israel to Plea for Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Late Jan. 2020 meeting follows “day of shame” in Vilnius in Dec. 2019, and “hateful libel” against Orthodox Vilnius Jewish woman (Jan. 2020) who launched the international petition; Prof. Shnayer Leiman’s response.

23 January 2020

JTA on Scandal Emanating from Lithuanian Parliamentarian Gumuliauskas’s Proposed Bill to “Fix” Holocaust History

PEACEFUL DEMO PLANNED AT LITHUANIAN EMBASSY IN TEL AVIV ON FRIDAY 24 JAN, 11 AM; FB; HEBREW POSTER

SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S TAKE

13 January 2020

Defending History Joins Lithuania in Mourning the Fourteen Unarmed Pro-Independence Protesters Murdered by Soviet Forces on 13 Jan. 1991

10 January 2020

from Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas’s post in BNS and Vakarų Ekspresas

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LRT’s “Panorama” runs report on the Soviet sports palace building (timecode: 21:25—25:20), envisaging “hundreds of millions of euros” and “a bag of gold”

2 January 2020

Israeli and Polish Ambassadors to Ukraine Issue Joint Letter Protesting New State Glorification of Holocaust Perpetrators (T.O.I. report by Sam Sokol)

1 January 2020

Antanas Zubrys and Dr. Matilda Zubrienė: Defending History’s Persons of the Year (2020)

Antanas Zubrys and Matilda Zubrienė

A Lithuanian hero of the War of Independence in 1920, one hundred years ago, who went on in 1941, with his wife, to risk their lives and their families and just do the right thing and save innocent neighbors from the racial genocide underway and supported by their own nation’s “nationalist leaders”… “Someone has to honor Lithuania’s real World War II heroes.” See background on current practice by some East European governments to honor Nazi collaborators (e.g. Lithuanian parliament’s 2018 decision; DH section). See DH’s Person of the Year awards for 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019.

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Updated Litvak One-Stop Shop for 2020

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Year of 300th Birthday of the Gaon of Vilna: novel critical approach of Andrius Kulikauskas’s brand new website on calendar of events. Our editor’s papers & articles.

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“7 Kingdoms of the Litvaks” is free online

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19 December 2019

A “Day of Shame” in Post-Holocaust East European Jewish History?

The upshot? The state owned property bank claims “Jewish support” for “the convention center in the old Jewish cemetery” via the alleged collusion of some London rabbis from the “CPJCE” and the head of the government sponsored Jewish community… But what about the opinion of all the others?

December 2019

Lithuania, a Genuine, Robust Democracy, Continues to Struggle with Free Speech when it Comes to the Holocaust

See Efraim Zuroff in the Jerusalem Post; Arkadijus Vinokuras in Times of Israel; Instances from the past decade monitored by DH; Section on free speech and democracy. Dovid Katz’s new paper on the (ab)use of law to “fix history” in the Baltics.

Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas founds major new initiative dedicated to Lithuanian-Jewish friendship and sense of common purpose for future of the Grand Duchy heritage by way of open, free and respectful dialogue and inspiring new projects

Program of 16 Dec. Bar Ilan Univeristy conference on Zuroff-Vanagaite book on the Lithuanian Holocaust; Conference report & photos

Nov.-Dec. 2019

Litvak World Shocked by New “Year of Gaon” 10 Euro Coin that Plonks a Symbol Beloved of Far Right onto a Mutilated Jewish Menorah

Defending History has followed the saga for three years

Ruta Bloshtein in Lithuanian in 7md (6 Dec.2019) [PDF of print edition]

Vilnius’s Jewish satirist Motke Chabad shares his own perspective

Ruta Bloshtein (2 Dec.) and Ben Cohen (28 Nov.) in the Algemeiner Journal

Dovid Katz (15 Nov. and 22 Nov.) and Ruta Bloshtein (26 Nov.) in DH

Grant Gochin in The Times of Israel on other painful issues evoked by “Year of Gaon” plans (also on LJC website); See DH’s Seven Simple Solutions on Lithuanian-Jewish issues

More coverage by Algemeiner Journal, Arutz Sheva, Enlace Judío, Haaretz, Israel National News, Jewish Chronicle, JTA, YNet, YNetEspanol, Times of Israel (ToI French edition)

Is it perhaps an opportune moment for the government to abandon plans for a convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, where hundreds of the Gaon’s ancestors and descendants still lie buried? International petition continues to grow.

Autumn 2019

AP on Streets Newly Named in Kiev for Nazi Collaborators

Clemens Heni in Portal for Political Science

Justin Ward in Medium on History Revisionism in Hungary

Andrius Kulikauskas in Bernardinai on Vilnius Jewish Cemetery Saga; Chief Rabbi of South Africa Weighs In; But NY Yivo stages PR event for government’s positions only

Aleksandr Kuzmin in DH on Latvian Defense Minister’s Glorification of Waffen-SS; Jewish Voice on History of Latvian Holocaust

Cnaan Liphshiz in Times of Israel (French) on Holocaust Museums

George N. Tzogopoulos at Begin-Sadat Center on Israel’s Role; See DH’s Israel Page

23 Sept. 2019

International Coverage of Vilnius’s Day of Prayer, Plea & Protest for the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt

Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas’s keynote address; Report (+ photo gallery) in Lithuania’s 15min.lt; LRT evening news (from timecode 4:56). European Foundation for Human Rights

Letter from South Africa’s chief rabbi to Lithuania’s president

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London CPJCE “Jewish grave traders” are called to face charges at the Jerusalem rabbinical court. In London, a “Serious Incident” report is filed with the United Kingdom’s Charity Commission. Background on CPJCE’s Vilnius outrage. The video.

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Canadian Govt. Officials “Duped” into Participating in Honors for Ukraine’s OUN / UPA Hitler Collaborators

Reports in National Post and Ottawa Citizen

Defending History’s Take: “Canada, a bastion of enlightened liberalism in today’s world, has blundered into a moral mouse-trap. Hopefully its highest leaders will now rapidly correct the error and join all those around the world who condemn the Nazis and their collaborators’ rampages of ethnic-based mass murder and genocide in World War II era Eastern Europe.”

23 September 2019

Monday September 23 in Vilnius

Day of Prayer and Respectful Challenge to Spare Old Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės) from Plans to Site a Convention Center in its Heart

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Sign Ruta Bloshtein’s Petition See the International Support DH Section

Sept. 2019

A Decade of Defending History

Defending History marks its 10th anniversary in Sept. 2019

9 years ago. 7 years ago. 5 years ago. 3 years ago.

Come and browse old issues; first post; mission statement; Samples of coverage over the years by Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post; Arne Bengtsson in Baltic World; Daniel Brook in Slate; Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report; Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian; Avi Friedman in Mishpacha; Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger; Rod Nordland in the New York Times; Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service.

Documentary films: Danny Ben-Moshe’s Rewriting History; Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust History

PLEASE SUPPORT DH’S CONTINUED PUBLICATION

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9 Sept. 2019

Vilnius is Shamed by Brand New Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Holocaust Collaborator

Calls for government to rapidly “do the right thing: take it down”

Thursday 5 September: Crowd glorifying Holocaust collaborator screams “Noreika” as new plaque is affixed on public space in central Vilnius. Photo: J. Stecevičius/LRT

Reports in Delfi.lt; Lrt.lt; 15min.lt

Vilnius mayor calls plaque “illegal”; Faina Kukliansky issues powerful statement of protest; BNS; Baltic Times reports that sciences library is quite happy with its new plaque; JTA report

So far, a wall of public silence from the “Yiddish-loving culture minister“, from Yivo, and from the Western and Israeli embassies in Lithuania

Defending History’s take: “A very sad day for Lithuania and its proud ages-old tradition of Grand Duchy tolerance and its current record as a successful democracy. Ten years after Defending History published images of the plaque honoring Noreika, seven years after Evaldas Balciunas brought the issue to the English speaking world, and one month after Vilnius’s bold mayor boldly had the plaque removed, a mob of antisemites who celebrate the Holocaust’s perpetrators have put up an even shinier plaque, rapidly declared to be illegal by the mayor. The text of the new plaque is rather worse from the viewpoint of historic honesty, by referring to Noreika’s imprisonment by the Nazis at one point (the phenomenon of “Holocaust envy”), as if that makes a hero of a brutal Holocaust collaborator. Lithuania’s great people deserve better! Hopefully, the nation’s highest powers will remove the plaque without further delay, in the name of the rule of law, the nation’s standing, and basic human decency. See DH’s sections on: J. Noreika; Collaborators Glorified; the 2019 midsummer events that presaged the latest events.

August 2019

Bravo to Hizzoner Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius

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Sam Sokol in JTA

Jillian Deutsch in Politico

Deutsche Welle

Vilna Jewish Cemetery Petition Hits 46,000 Mark

Lithuanian Jewish Community Reports on State Investigation of “Red-Brown Commission” Chief (background; video)

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Vilna-born Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg’s “enormous courage” in challenging “perpetrator whitewashing” by nationalist icon V. Landsbergis

Prof. Pinchos Fridberg ©DefendingHistory.com

See Pinchos Fridberg section; DH’s 2012 take on Landsbergis. Meanwhile, controversial official head of gov. sponsored Jewish community, eminent attorney Ms. Faina Kukliansky, wins acclaim for (finally) standing up to Landsbergis, after he used crude anti-Jewish ethnic slur on FB; Baltic Times features a rude reply with no pretense of evenhanded journalism. EU Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis speaks out (see DH’s Andriukaitis section, and his classic statements on the Seventy Years Declaration and the reburial of wartime Nazi puppet prime minister in 2012).

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Polish government glorifies unit that fought for the Nazis

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Prominent Vilnius historian publishes article in mainstream media complaining that too many “foreign Jews” have been included in the state-sponsored history commission

9 Aug. 2019

Ten years after Defending History published images of the plaques. Seven years after DH’s Evaldias Balčiūnas brought the case of J. Noreika to the English speaking world. Four years after Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas‘s classic DH essay on K. Škirpa:

Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius Leads City Council Decision to Rename “Škirpa Street” and Personally Orders Removal of Noreika Plaque in 4 AM Raid

Official Lithuanian Jewish Community Closes Premises and Synagogue on 6-8 Aug. in View of Threats, Citing Conservative Party’s Ongoing Campaign to Glorify Holocaust Collaborators

At Aug. 7 central Vilnius rally in support of continued glorification of Holocaust collaborators. Sign at left: “Stop Judaeophile vandalism”. Poster at right asks if it is still Lithuania or already the Northern Jerusalem…

Media coverage: AFP, AJ, AP/WAPO, A7, BB, CBS, EJC, IH, JNS, JTA, TOI

Statement issued by Vilnius Jewish Community; JTA reports of 6. Aug; 7 Aug; 8 Aug (+TOI); LJC’s circulated reply to VJC

Baltic Times gives big-time coverage to Landsbergis’s attack on official Jewish community leader Kukliansky. Will they provide equal space for the community’s response?

Aug. 7 rally demanded restoration of public space plaques and street names that glorify Holocaust collaborators held at Mindaugas Monument; Baltic Times’s “shamefully one-sided” report in far right spirit of trivializing glorification of Holocaust perpetrators

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Poster advertising Aug. 7th rally blasts mayor who took action against glorification of collaborators, shows Jewish and gay pride symbols as the culprits

Photoshopped version of painting by F. Reshetnikov depicts several boys observing what seems like a Jewish-LGBT event from around the corner. Text at top reads “Škirpa and Vėtra [Noreika] are heroes of Lithuania”. The lower text depicts a rooster (“gaidys” in Lithuanian, used as a homophobic slur) and is labeled “Šimašius”, i.e., the current Mayor of Vilnius Remigijus Šimašius who recently led efforts to remove public glorification of two Holocaust collaborators. Text at bottom: “Let’s defend the heroes of Lithuania! Rally under the Mayor’s windows, by the monument of King Mindaugas. August 7 (Wed.), from 18:00 to 19:30.”

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Question: Will the Roskies & Fishman “Yiddish PR conference” financed to deflect attention from the painful issues, publish a morally clear statement of protest (and support for the Jewish community)? Do conference participants appreciate concerns they are being used as “useful Jewish idiots” (UJIs) in the wider effort to rewrite Holocaust history and cover for blatant antisemitism?

Are they aware of the systematic exclusion from their conference of all the local Jewish scholars in this field who have expressed disagreement with the glorification of Holocaust collaborators (including Holocaust survivors who have written about Jewish Vilna)? Will they consider signing Ruta Bloshtein’s petition on the old Vilna Jewish cemetery?

BACKGROUND: See DH sections on collaborators glorified; Noreika saga; Ramanauskas saga; seven Lithuanian-Jewish issues that could be easily resolved; academic background. the Seventy Years Declaration (SYD). signed by 71 European parliamentarians including eight valiant Lithuanian MPs and MEPs.

1 August 2019

“It Pays to Defend History”

Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius Orders Removal of Memorial Plaque for Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika

According to reports, city’s removal squad came 4 AM on 27 July; see now: the nationalist backlash (2); new president falls back on “more discussions needed” ignoring years of such discussions. JTA report. Vilnius prosecutors considering challenges to mayor’s action. Vilnius’s Prof. Pinchos Fridberg takes the battle over glorifying Hitler collaborators right to Vytautas Landsbergis. Meanwhile, Conservative Party’s Landsbergis Jr. hits back and official Jewish community exposes antisemitic slur on his FB page.

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Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius

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A seven year saga since Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas brought the Noreika case to the English speaking world in 2012

Lithuanian author & ethicist Evaldas Balčiūnas

For years Mr. Balčiūnas was hounded by police, prosecutors and kangaroo hearings (scroll down to May 2014)

Over the years, Defending History’s campaign won support from the Simon Wiesenthal Center; the Rambam Mesivta High School that staged a peaceful demonstration at Lithuania’s consulate in New York; Noreika’s granddaughter, American author Silvia Foti; and Californian Litvak scion Grant Gochin, who took Vilnius’s “Genocide Center” to court. The GC’s public statement revealed its true view on the Holocaust. Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas is curator of online Captain Noreika Museum.

Follow the mayor’s impressive personal trajectory on these issues over the years

Marble Noreika stone continues to mar capital’s central boulevard

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NEXT QUESTION:

The mayor will hopefully soon speak out on fate of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, slated to become a convention center, that would damage Vilnius’s brand for generations to come. Vilnius native Ruta Bloshtein’s petition now has over 46,000 signatures from every part of the world.

24 July 2019

Vilnius City Council Finally Decides to Change Name of Škirpa Street

Vote is 20 to 16

Defending History brought the issue to the international community in 2010

See Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas’s classic 2015 Defending History paper on Škirpa; Vilnius City Council efforts by Mark Harold

Report by JTA

Prof. Pinchos Fridberg and Ruta Kaplinskaya concerned by report that new street name will be accompanied by new plaque glorifying Škirpa yet again

Škirpa is in the middle (Berlin, 1941)

Changing toxic street names that glorify Hitler collaborators is high on the list of the very easy things Lithuania needs to do to achieve justice on the irksome history issues that will just not go away. See DH’s seven solutions compiled with the help of the late Dr. Shimon Alperovich.

But what about Škirpa Street in Kaunas, which is slated to be “Capital of European Culture” in 2022?

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July 2019

Ukraine’s Constitutional Court Affirms “Red Equals Brown” Law

Radio Free Europe (Radio Liberty) report fails to inform readers of the Double Genocide issues and abuse of history to further far-right Holocaust revisionism that includes glorification of Holocaust collaborators

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LEV GOLINKIN IN THE WASHINGTON POST

EFRAIM ZUROFF IN THE JERUSALEM POST

ROBERT ROZETT IN ISRAEL JOURNAL OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

GRANT GOCHIN IN THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

IVAN KATCHANOVSKI ON UKRAINE’S UPA & OUP

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June-July 2019

More Lithuanian Government Glories & Medals for “Useful Jewish Enablers” of Baltic Holocaust Revisionism

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June 2019

California Resident Grant Gochin Appeals Vilnius Court Ruling that Whitewashed Notorious Holocaust Collaborator Jonas Noreika

IHRA weighs in. More reaction. For first time (?), Lithuanian TV presents both sides.

The Question: Will an EU/NATO democracy continue to sink government funds into glorification of Holocaust collaborators? Don’t the Lithuanian people have higher values and causes into which to invest their hard-earned taxpayer money?

FOLLOW THE SEVEN YEAR NOREIKA SAGA IN DEFENDING HISTORY

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23 June 2019

Kaunas (Slated to be 2022 “Capital of European Culture”) Hosts Far-Right (/Neo-Nazi) City Center Jamboree Honoring June 23 “Uprising” that Unleashed the Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry in 1941

In Vilnius, the parliament (Seimas) hosts a one-sided conference on the LAF (Lithuanian Ativist Front) Hitlerist militias that unleashed violence on Jewish neighbors before German forces even arrived.

Meanwhile, a naive article in National Review accepts the distorted history of Vilnius’s “Genocide Museum” (see our critique of the museum), that calls the Hitlerist “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF)’s outbreak of violence against Jewish neighbors a rebellion against the Soviets. The brutal Soviet occupation forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion (the largest in human history), not the LAF Jew-killers.

These killers didn’t fire a single shot against the Soviets when they were in power. You can’t “rebel” against someone who is in panic running away from someone else. . . The Holocaust is being rewritten by the East European far right (in part to make heroes out of the Eastern European collaborators) even as leaders of major Jewish organization in the US and elsewhere remain silent.

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16 June 2019

The Good Old Pattern Continues in Biržai (Birzh), Northern Lithuania:

A magnificent new memorial to thousands of Holocaust victims at the mass grave in the forest.

Honors, medals and photo-ops for the foreign donors and enablers.

The official museum in the city center continues to honor Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators as “national heroes”, an issue not mentioned at any of the public events.

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June 2019

State Glorification for Chaplain of a Holocaust-era Mass Murder Unit; Simon Wiesenthal Center Speaks Out

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Chone Leibovich of Vilnius Jewish Community appeals to National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (scroll down for English)

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May-June 2019

A Sad Story for Chicago and Lithuania

that is ‘not going away’

UPDATE OF JUNE 1: Head of Jewish Agency calls for monument to Nazi collaborator to be removed “as soon as possible”

In Vilnius, Defending History staff get more death threats

First monument on American soil glorifying a wartime Nazi collaborator who is also a prime icon for his country’s neo-Nazis today was inaugurated last month (May 4) in the presence of the visiting Lithuanian foreign minister

LATEST MEDIA: Algemeiner; BBC; Grayzone; Independent; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Telegraph. And—Defending History’s take.

On Ramanauskas’s Holocaust-era role see courageous, pioneering articles of Lithuanian ethicist Evaldas Balčiūnas in 2014, 2017 and his latest that has just appeared. For years after starting his series of articles “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” Balčiūnas was hounded by prosecutors and police (scroll to May 2014).

UPDATES: HOW THE “OFFICIAL JEWISH COMMUNITY” WAS USED AND ABUSED

RAMANAUSKAS: A FIVE YEAR SAGA

WAS THE US EMBASSY AGAIN DRAGGED INTO THINGS THAT DON’T REFLECT AMERICAN VALUES?

**Beyond the debates over Ramanauskas’s role in the early days of the Lithuanian Holocaust, he is today a major icon for Neo-Nazi parades and events.**

From left to right on the neo-Nazis’ “We know our national heroes” banner (torchlit neo-Nazi parade of Feb. 2018): Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, Jonas Noreika, Povilas Plechavičius, Kazys Škirpa, Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas, and Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis

Latest far-right death threats against DH editor appear on Facebook (as PDF; transl.). They were apparently instigated by the neo-Nazis’ top blogger in Lithuania, “Zeppelinus” (PDF; part transl.) who is said to work in the Ministry of the Economy. These threats came in response to DH’s opinion that Lithuania’s interests are not best served by a monument in Chicago to an alleged Holocaust collaborator who is also a prime icon for today’s neo-Nazi parades here. Samples of Zeppelinus’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic output of hate. Some of his earlier “artwork” on DH editor.

This monument, honoring Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), who boasted in his memoirs of leading an LAF unit of fascist Hiterlist militia during the first weeks of the Holocaust (June-July 1941) in southeastern Lithuania, was overwhelmingly rejected for placement on public land by New Britian, Connecticut one year ago. But on Saturday, 4 May it was inaugurated by Lithuania’s foreign minister on the private property of the Lithuanian World Center in Chicago, Illinois. The English news release casually omits the reference to the Holocaust issues cited in the original BNS Lithuanian report.

On the legacy of Ramanauskas, see Evaldas Balčiūnas (in 2014, 2017 and 2019); Efraim Zuroff and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and Dovid Katz. Defending History documented the entire 2017-2018 New Britain, Conn. saga. Sampling of survivor testimony on “what it was that the LAF was doing” in the last week of June 1941. SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S SECTION ON ADOLFAS RAMANAUSKAS.◊◊

Defending History’s take: “The people of Chicago, and its proud Lithuanian and Litvak communities, should not have foisted on them a monument glorifying an alleged Holocaust collaborator who led a Hitlerist militia in the early days of the Holocaust, a monument that was overwhelmingly rejected by the New Britain, Connecticut city council one year ago. And, most certainly not without a free, public and transparent process of dialogue and consultation including Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as scholars and institutions representing a diversity of opinions. A one-year moratorium is called for to enable such a process to proceed with dignity.”

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3 May 2019

Latest on State Honors for Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika in Lithuania

HUNDREDS OF JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS PROTEST OUTSIDE LITHUANIAN CONSULATE IN NEW YORK CITY

TRACK THE SEVEN-YEAR OLD NOREIKA SAGA HERE

DEFENDING HISTORY’S SECTION ON COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

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28 April 2019

EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PROTESTS EU FUNDING FOR VILNIUS MUSIC JAMBOREE ON WEEKEND OF 27-28 APRIL IN THE HEART OF CITY’S OLD JEWISH CEMETERY

PDF OF NEW STATEMENT

As addendum to EFHR’s case filed; international opposition; petition reaching 46,000 mark

Recent coverage in the Algemeiner Journal; English Delfi.lt (Lithuania Tribune); Jerusalem Post;

INCREDIBLY, M. K. ČIURLIONIS HOUSE & MUSEUM ARE PARTNERING

Protest letter from Julius Norwilla, chairman of the Vilnius Committee for Preservation of Piramont (Snipiskes) Cemetery to the Director of the Čiurlionis House and Museum

DEFENDING HISTORY MONITORING TEAM WAS ON THE SCENE FROM 12 TO 3 PM ON 28 APRIL 2019

Thousands (in groups of 25) were misinformed by guides’ prepared text assurance that convention center is with permission of “European Jewish Community in 2016” (!). Soviet kitsch was praised effusively in latest ruse to turn hated Soviet dump into “a national treasure”. Rabbi S. J. Feffer confronts one of the groups with a heartfelt speech of protest informing visitors of the “wanton theft of our forefathers’ graves” and blessing those who will help stop the travesty from moving forward.

MORE IN DEFENDING HISTORY

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Meanwhile in London, a Serious Incident Report has been filed with the UK’s national Charity Commission requesting an investigation of the role of the CPJCE in the destruction of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery.

Unique study in body language: “blockbuster video” of London CPJCE staff allegedly morally selling other people’s graves against the rulings of all the rabbis of Vilnius and of the planet. In fact, when the then chief rabbi of Lithuania, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein, spoke up in 2015, he was fired for expressing his views. Views of Rabbi S.J. Feffer (leading Litvak religious authority in the country) and Rabbi S.B. Krinsky (official rabbi of the synagogue / Chabad Lithuania).

The Wikileaks cable that just will not go away (jump to end of point 8)

Ruta Bloshtein’s petition approaches 46,000

Overviews by Shnayer Leiman, Juris Kaža, Michael Maass, Dovid Katz, and Vilna-born Holocaust survivor Pinchos Fridberg; Statements by elected head of Vilnius Jewish Community Simon Gurevich

SEE MORE

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24 April 2019

Granddaughter of Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika, the American author and educator Silvia Foti launches a bold international petition calling on Lithuania’s gov. to stop glorifying him.

LATEST CHAPTER IN A SAGA OF SEVEN YEARS

HOW DOES A JEWISH CITIZEN OF LITHUANIA FEEL ABOUT IT?

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23 April 2019

“The rights of minority cemeteries are human rights”

Legal Action Underway on Attempts to Pilfer Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery for National Convention Center

NEWS RELEASE FROM EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

REPORTS IN ENGLISH DELFI (LITHUANIA TRIBUNE); IN THE ALGEMEINER (NY); BNS/LRT; THE JERUSALEM POST

UPDATE OF 24 APRIL: EUROPEAN UNION FINANCES MUSIC FESTIVAL ON CEMETERY GROUNDS THIS WEEKEND

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8 April 2019

Vilnius Plaque Glorifying Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika is Smashed by Maverick Candidate for the European Parliament, Attorney Stanislavas Tomas

All on film, streamed live Monday morning 8 April 2019, from candidate’s bilingual statements through to his calling the police and their eventual arrival to make the arrest

VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

(plaque smashing at 14:30; English segments at 04:10; 22:40)

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Defending History’s comment:

“We unequivocally condemn violent acts against any property. Plaques can and will be replaced, and acts of property violence are totally illegal, inherently unethical, and utterly counterproductive to the noble cause of ridding Europe of glorification of Nazism. There needs to be dignified, peaceful and lawful civic and international pressure for the removal of all state-sponsored, public-space glorification of Holocaust collaborators, not least in Lithuania where some 96% of the Jewish population was massacred with massive local collaboration and participation. The real heroes are the amazing Lithuanians who risked everything in 1941 to just save a neighbor and we pray for the day when plaques and streets for them will abound across the land. See our own Person of the Year for 2018 and 2019.”

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On Jonas Noreika’s Holocaust activities, see Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas

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Samples of other monuments and street names glorifying Holocaust collaborators. DH section on glorification of collaborators. The major Noreika monument in Vilnius is actually the engraved marble stone on the city’s central Gedimino Boulevard outside the Genocide Museum:

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8 April 2019

Andrius Kulikauskas calls on Lithuanian Parliament to Stand Up to State-Sponsored Genocide Center’s Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators

Dovid Katz interviewed by Stan Tomas (video)

World Jewish Congress Replies to Vilnius Genocide Center; Stops Short of Mentioning Government’s Financing of Street Names and Honors for Holocaust Perpetrators; Official Jewish Community Breaks Long Silence on GC’s Antisemitism

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3 April 2019

Eyewitness Report: A Verdict is Read in a Vilnius Court

Case was over the state’s glorification of a cruel Holocaust collaborator and purveyor of racial hate. First time a court in an EU/NATO country ruled in favor of the government glorifying Holocaust collaborators with street names and majestic public plaques, reducing the Holocaust to a detail not worthy of interfering with its perpetrators’ “heroism”…

Verdict came down on 27 March. Since then: utter silence from the US, UK and Israeli embassies in Vilnius, and from the “Red-Brown” Commission (which has affiliations with the Genocide Center) and its foreign members representing Yivo and the American Jewish Committee. But on April 3rd, the World Jewish Congress issued a major statement, to some extent avoiding the current issue of state glorification of Holocaust perpetrators via street names and plaques.

At 1 PM on Wed. March 27th, a Vilnius Administrative Court judge read out the court’s ruling dismissing the query of US resident Grant Gochin over Lithuania’s state glorification of Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika, active during the Holocaust in the region where Gochin lost around 100 relatives. The court said Mr. Gochin had no material interest, ruled that the state-sponsored Genocide Center had answered his query completely, without bias, and without abuse of power, in effect further enshrining in law an EU/NATO state’s glorification of Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators via the financing of ultranationalist and far-right history centers and departments determined to preserve the national hero status of Holocaust collaborators. Whenever government or municipal officials are asked about the numerous street names and plaques honoring collaborators, the invariable answer is that it is all in fact a matter for the experts at the Genocide Center.

Mr. Gochin’s academic specialist, Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas was on hand along with attorney Rokas Rudzinskas. Of the Genocide Center’s staff, only historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys turned up, sitting in the small gallery surrounded in part by first and second generation Holocaust survivors who turned out to hear the verdict that the Western embassies, human rights organization and official (state-sponsored) Jewish community thought not worth sending an official representative to hear. By contrast the local Vilnius Jewish Community had two observers on hand.

UPDATES: Genocide Center releases statement; official Jewish community issues reply.

JTA report is picked up by some Israeli papers but not one major American media outlet, general or Jewish… Why is that?

A moment before the courtroom clock strikes 1 PM: Genocide Center’s chief historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys (front row third from right) was the only GC official to come and hear the verdict.

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SEE FULL REPORT

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26 March 2019

Vilnius Court’s Verdict Awaited on Wednesday March 27th

Public welcome at the reading of the verdict at 1 PM at Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, Žygimantų 2 in the city center

Will a court in an EU/NATO country uphold a far-right Holocaust-obfuscating institution’s decision to make a national hero of a documented Holocaust collaborator?

See: Background. Report on 15 Jan. Report on 5 March.

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Meanwhile, Bizarre Decision from EU Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is in Spirit of Far Right’s “Double Genocide” Revisionism

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“The New Holocaust Denial is based on a postmodernist mush that confounds victims and perpetrators and tries to write the Holocaust out of history (without denying a single death) via an array of ruses emanating from Eastern Europe’s ultranationalist New Far Right.”

BACKGROUND

DH’s take. Report on 15 Jan. hearing. Report on 5 March hearing. Evaldas Balčiūnas’s 2012 article that brought Noreika to the attention of the English speaking world. Balčiūnas’s DH section.

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25 March 2019

Michael Mostyn in the Toronto Sun

Reports on pro-Nazi marches in Vilnius and Riga; Canada condemns Riga’s Waffen SS celebration

English original of part of Lithuanian TV’s interview with Dovid Katz

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20 March 2019

Vilnius Jewish Community Invites People of All Backgrounds to Purim Celebration with Traditional Reading of the Book of Esther

Wednesday evening, 20 March, at 7 PM, at the Vilnius Jewish Community & Jewish Cultural and Information Center at Mesiniu 3 in Vilnius Old Town

VJC’s additional family event features the traditional costume party competition on Thursday evening 21st

Just for Litvaks: Translation of the Book of Esther into Lithuanian Yiddish

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16 March 2019

AROUND 1000 TAKE PART IN 16 MARCH CENTRAL RIGA PARADE GLORIFYING LATVIA’S WARTIME NAZI WAFFEN SS

DPA; Haaretz; Jerusaem Post; Jüdisches Forum (video); Times of Israel

Detail from the day

Petition against annual event approaches 7,000 signatures

Background: Monica Lowenberg’s blog; DH coverage of previous years’ marches; Lowenberg’s articles in DH; Latvia section. Can people peacefully protest this march? A disturbing court ruling

Latvian participant in last month’s torchlight march in Vilnius on 16 Feb.

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13 March 2019

More Double Dealing by US Taxpayer Supported “Commission to Preserve America’s Heritage Abroad” (USCPAHA)?

Is it Washington DC’s most corrupt federal agency?

Are they really in cahoots with the allegedly corrupt bodies (CPJCE in London, “Admas Kodesh” or “AK” in NY) who gave “permission” for a convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery against the views of all other rabbis and ethicists? The NY branch (AK) has published crude personal invective against scholars who hold other opinions, including Prof. Bernard Fryshman (who has now taken USCPAHA to the courts).

VIDEO: Herbert Block’s formal new presentation to a major rabbi cites only USCPAHA’s partnership with these two bodies. No mention of the international petition (which he himself signed…) or the vast international opposition.

Tale of two videos: The CPJCE with the prime minister of Lithuania, and USCPAHA’s Herbert Block explaining his commission’s work to the rabbi in Israel . . . See also earlier Admas Kodesh photo gallery of USCPAHA “reporting to Satmar Rebba in Monroe”… (Note: Leader of the opposing Satmar dynasty has himself condemned the convention center project in Vilnius).

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BACKGROUND:

The basic story (DH’s section). International opposition to date. The USCPAHA. The CPJCE.

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8 March 2019

After ‘Hearing Both Sides’ at Trial of March 5th, Vilnius Court Sets Verdict for 27th

Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, moments before his historic address before the Vilnius court on state-funded Genocide Center’s policy of glorifying Holocaust collaborators. The center’s “decisions” are cited by high officials as “justification” for street names, university hall plaques and other public-space state-funded glorifications of Holocaust collaborators. Around 96% of Lithuanian Jewry was massacred in the Holocaust.

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Defending History was there. Our take:

Andrius Kulikauskas will go down in history not only as the hero of the day but as the true patriot of Lithuania whose love for his country is not infected by Holocaust obfuscation and the glorification of Holocaust perpetrators but by a pursuit of simple historic truth. By contrast, the Genocide Center’s shameful performance illustrated, as ever, why the government should not be using taxpayer or EU funds for a far-right ultranationalist Holocaust-obfuscating entity that disparages the freedom of Lithuanian citizens to have diverse opinions (by dictating fake history as per the Soviet playbook) and continues to damage Lithuania’s name in the world (East European democracies need state glorification of Holocaust collaborators like a hole in the head).

Evaldas Balčiūnas, whose 2012 article brought the case to international attention, was in attendance. Icing on the cake was the Genocide Center’s demand that the videographer leave at the outset. So much for government sponsorship of an open and transparent operation. There were close to 20 observers, mostly Vilnius Jewish personalities there in an individual capacity, including Prof. Pinchos Fridberg, who figured in a New York Times article on the subject last September. Elected Vilnius Jewish Community head Simon Gurevich, committed elsewhere, nevertheless made two brief appearances to show moral support for those who stand up to glorification of collaborators and to the community members in attendance. The VJC hosted Dr. Kulikauskas on Jan 14th.

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“It had the air of a 21st century Lithuanian version of America’s Scopes Monkey Trial.”

Eyewitness reports and opinions by Evaldas Balčiūnas and Gershon Taic (Geršonas Taicas)

Finally, reports began to appear in mainstream Lithuanian media: BNS/Diena.lt; LRT; Delfi; Alkas.lt; Arkadijus Vinokuras in Delfi.lt. Official information on the court’s website.

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Background: Run-up to eve of the trial

California Financial Planner Takes Lithuania’s State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” to Court on March 5th for Enabling Gov. Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika

Proceedings are open to the public (Tuesday March 5th, 10 AM at Vilnius Regional Administrative Court at Žygimantų 2 in central Vilnius). Media to date includes the BBC World Service, Chicago Tribune, JTA. The plaintiff is California wealth advisor Grant Arthur Gochin whose family lost around 100 relatives in the Holocaust in the area where Noreika operated. He will be represented in Vilnius by attorney Rokas Rudzinskas and specialist Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, author of the Query that launched the case. He has a compelling letter of support from Noreika’s granddaughter, American educator and author Silvia Foti. See Ms. Foti’s remarkable 2018 essay in Salon, and the recent takes by Grant Gochin, Dovid Katz, Andrius Kulikauskas, and Efraim Zuroff.

The case of J. Noreika was brought to the English speaking world in 2012 by journalist and ethicist Evaldas Balčiūnas of Šiauliai (Shavl), Lithuania, as part of a series of articles asking why his government honors alleged Holocaust collaborators. He was “rewarded” with years of prosecutorial and police harassment and kangaroo trials. Please scroll down to May 2014 in DH’s Balčiūnas section. In some opinions, Lithuania is a totally free-speech country with the marked exception of Holocaust history.

UTTER SILENCE FROM THE GOV. FUNDED “RED-BROWN COMMISSION” (ONE OF WHOSE MEMBERS IS ACTIVELY SOLICITING 10,000 EUROS IN CROWDFUNDING FOR NEW BOOK ON LITHUANIAN HOLOCAUST; CROWDFUNDING PAGE)

WILL THE AMERICAN, BRITISH, CANADIAN, FRENCH, GERMAN, IRISH, ISRAELI, NORWEGIAN & SWEDISH EMBASSIES (AMONG OTHERS) AND HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS BE SENDING OBSERVERS TO THE TRIAL ON TUESDAY?

BACKGROUND: Collaborators glorified; street names and university lecture halls; the Genocide Center in Vilnius; the Genocide Museum; academic background to the “Double Genocide” movement for Holocaust revisionism

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March 2019

Lev Golinkin in The Nation on Ukraine’s issues with adulation of fascism and Holocaust collaborators

David Pugliese in the Ottawa Citizen on Latvian and Ukrainian projects to revise history

Petition against Waffen SS March on March 16th in Riga; Background: Monica Lowenberg’s blog; DH coverage of previous years’ marches; Lowenberg’s articles in DH; Can people peacefully protest this march? A disturbing court ruling in 2017

Euronews report on far right’s march in central Tallinn, Estonia

Julius Norwilla attends meeting of Lithuania’s state property bank that plans convention center in heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Vilnius: LRT TV interviews Dovid Katz

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20 February 2019

VILNIUS ALERT WED. 20 FEB. 2019

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Legendary Jewish Partisan who Fought the Nazis in the Forests of Lithuania, Currently Major Yiddish Culture Educator, Will be Guest of Honor at Today’s Yiddish Reading Circle

Fania Brantsovsky (left) with the late Dr. Rokhl Margolis (1921-2015) in Vilnius in 2007

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SPECIAL SESSION IN HONOR OF THE NEW BILINGUAL YIDDISH-LITHUANIAN EDITION OF THE LATE AARON GARON’S ESSAYS ON JEWISH VILNA EDITED BY LINAS VILDŽIŪNAS, WHO WILL BE ATTENDING THE EVENT, ALONG WITH THE AUTHOR’S CHILDREN, TAMARA AND EVGENY GARON.

Photo gallery of the event

6 to 7:30 PM AT THE VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY, MESINIU 3 IN VILNIUS OLD TOWN. ALL ARE WELCOME!

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16 February 2019

“IT PAYS TO DEFEND HISTORY”

“Once again, it becomes clear how Defending History is the true friend of Lithuania and other democratic states in the Eastern EU that need glorification of Holocaust collaborators like a hole in the head”

DH’s Vilnius monitors, observing the event for a decade, report on “significant progress”: For the first time in many years, the far-right February 16 march, though at times noxious (e.g. when a group reveled in a “Noreika plaque photo-op”), had no visible banners glorifying local Holocaust collaborators and no visible swastikas on flags, and no organized chants of “Lietuva Lietuviams” (Lithuania for Lithuanians). By contrast, a few Latvian visitors wore jackets emblazoned with “Waffen SS”. At its conclusion, two of the march’s organizers approached our team for a civil discussion which turned to the participation of “non-Catholic & non-ethnic Lithuanians” in the war of independence leading to the rise of the democratic interwar Lithuanian Republic on 16 Feb. 1918.

Vilnius Authorities Again Gifting Capital’s Storied Old Town for Far-Right March on Cherished Independence Day

Are they celebrating the Holocaust and the massacre of Lithuanian Jewry?

Last year’s neo-Nazi event featured front banner glorifying a series of local Holocaust collaborators; it was addressed by a high Catholic Church official and “honored guest” neo-Nazis from abroad

2018 lead banner: “WE KNOW WHO OUR NATION’S HEROES ARE”. The “sanitized” event in central Vilnius featured a lead banner glorifying six Nazi collaborators, five of them deeply implicated in the Lithuanian Holocaust. The torchlit march, the day’s final event, made its way from Vilnius’s most sacred Catholic shrine down through the Old City, culminating at a street named for one of the collaborators who had advocated “only” ethnic cleansing of the country’s Jewish minority in 1941. PHOTO: © DEFENDING HISTORY.

Come and join Defending History’s monitoring team. Event scheduled to start Saturday 16 February 6 PM at Aušros Vartų. Facebook details; website.

See Defending History’s decade-long eyewitness coverage of far-right marches in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Riga.

and

A Short History Lesson:

All of interwar Lithuania’s 239 Jewish communities (massacred in 1941) cherished and celebrated February 16th with heart and soul. They were proud Lithuanian citizens. It was also their Independence Day. See the 2013 letter from the late Joe Melamed, longtime elected leader of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, and any of countless records and pictures. Here, a photo (with bilingual Hebrew and Lithuanian handwritten captions) of the Jews of Dorbyán (Darbėnai) celebrating February 16th 1928, the tenth anniversary of independence:

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30 January 2019

AP Report on Netanyahu Government’s Alleged “Sale of Holocaust History” in Eastern Europe is carried by New York Times, Washington Post, & Israel’s Haaretz & YNet

See Israel Chronicle summary page; Israel section; Sam Sokol’s new paper.

Related: Matti Friedman’s New York Times op-ed on the politicization of Yad Vashem. Cf. Danny Ben-Moshe’s earlier op-ed in Jerusalem Report. See Defending History’s Yad Vashem section.

Highpoints of Israeli diplomacy on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe: Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter in 2009; Ambassador Joel Lion in 2018.

Lowpoint: Ambassador Amir Maimon in 2017 (his performance made it into the academic literature before he was even transferred to his next posting).

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27 January 2019

Holocaust Remembrance Week 2019

In recent times, the greatest threat to Holocaust Remembrance Day is the Double Genocide Holocaust revisionist movement whose “constitution” is the 2008 Prague Declaration. Defending History is proud to have taken part in the Europarliamentary response, the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration. The relevance of all this to Holocaust Remembrance Day was made crystal clear nine years ago by Yehuda Bauer on the pages of the Jerusalem Post. See also the essay by Holocaust survivor and scholar, and former director of Yad Vashem, Dr. Yitzhak Arad, in Defending History. Identity Films has just made available free online its 2012 documentary Rewriting History. Richard Bloom Productions has done the same for its 2013 film, Defending Holocaust History.

William Echikson’s new report on how European countries are treating their Holocaust history

Coverage of the report in Politico.eu; Grant Arthur Gochin’s blog in The Times of Israel.

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26 January 2019

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė:

Why do Authorities Choose to Evict Roma in the Middle of the Baltic Winter?

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ON OUR PAGES 7 YEARS AGO. 5 YEARS AGO. 3 YEARS AGO.

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24 January 2019

“The rights of minority cemeteries to be left in peace are human rights”

Two Visualizations of a Convention Center in the Middle of Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery

I: Lithuania’s State Bank (“Turto Bankas”) triumphantly issues its latest visualization for a national convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves. The huge new annex is “artfully” obscured (at the back).

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2: Defending History issues its reply visualization. The people of Vilnius deserve a sparkling new convention center that will be a pride to all peoples everywhere, where they will be greeted by leaders of the arts, culture, music, politics, not by the tens of thousands of ghosts of the Jews of Vilna whose families purchased their burial plots in perpetuity. Join the 45,000 people who have signed Ruta Bloshtein’s international petition.

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OLDER FRONT PAGE POSTS

Posted in Boxes | Tagged "Dovid Katz", Andrew Baker (AJC), Andy Baker (AJC), anti-semitism in Ukraine, Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA), CPJCE (London), David G. Roskies, democracy in Ukraine, Double Genocide, Dov-Ber Kerler, Edward Blank + YIVO, Efraim Zuroff, Erin E. Stewart (New Britain), Euro-Maidan revolution, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Brantsovsky, Fania Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Free speech in Poland, free speech in Ukraine, Herbert Block, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust in Poland, Indiana Borns Judaic Studies Program, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Jewish heritage in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Joseph Melamed, Liebe Geft, Lithuanian Jewish issues, Lithuanian Jews, Litvak Culture, Milan Chersonski, Nazi collaborators honored in Ukraine, Old Vilnius Jewish cemetery, OUN, Poland, Poroshenko + Bandera, Prague Platform on European Conscience and Communism, Rabbi Avohom Pinter, Rabbi Herschel Gluck OBE, Rabbi Hershel Gluck OBE, Rachel Margolis, Richard Maullin, Ruta Vanagaite, Sarunas Liekis, Silvia Foti, Tolerance Museum in LA, Ukraine + Bandera, Ukraine + far right, Ukraine + Holocaust, Ukraine + neo-Nazis, Ukraine + World War II, UPA, US Foreign Policy in Eastern Europe, Vanagaite + Zuroff, Vilnius Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Yiddish summer course, Yiddish in Vilnius, Yitzhak Arad, YIVO benefit dinner, Yivo in Lithuani, Yivo Lithuania | Comments Off

OLDER FRONT PAGE POSTS

Posted on 20 December 2019 by Defending History

21 January 2018

“Defending History Brings Results”

Jewish Gravestones Used as Main Steps to Vilnius’s Central Reformed Evangelical Church are Finally Returned to Jewish Cemetery

5 years after Defending History’s 2013 report brought the issue to international attention

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15 January 2019

Vilnius Court Case on State Honors for a Holocaust Collaborator is Adjourned to March 5th

Defending History was there. Read our full report. Get acquainted with the extraordinary background. Ofer Aderet in Haarets.

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THE PLAINTIFFS’ TABLE: Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, longtime contributing writer at DH (left) represented absent American plaintiff Grant Gochin at the hearing on state honors for Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika, whose case was first brought to the English speaking world in 2012 by Evaldas Balčiūnas, who was also in attendance. At right is attorney Rokas Rudzinskas. PHOTO © Defending History 2019.

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Evaldas Balčiūnas, who first brought the case of Jonas Noreika to the English speaking world back in 2012, now reflects on his “7 years with Noreika”

To mark the case being brought to court, Identity Films re-releases 2012 documentary free online; Richard Bloom Productions re-releases its own 2013 documentary

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January 2019

From Near and Far

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Columbia University’s Prof. Tarik Cyril Amar returns medal to city of Lviv after it names 2019 for Bandera

Defending History names its Person of the Year for 2019: a man who volunteered to defend the new Republic of Lithuania 100 years ago and went on during the Holocaust to save 16 people; read about life and death of Jonas Paulavičius

Ruta Bloshtein issues challenge to US taxpayer funded commission (“USCPAHA”) that is supposed to preserve foreign minority cemeteries; her international petition reaches the 45,000 signature mark

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New York’s Daily News covers the “Save the Cemetery” movement led by Dov Fried; Israel’s interior minister weighs in

Sam Sokol’s new paper on Israeli policy toward Holocaust history appears in Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. Related: Matti Friedman’s New York Times op-ed on the politicization of Yad Vashem. Cf. Danny Ben-Moshe’s earlier op-ed in Jerusalem Report. See Defending History’s Yad Vashem section and the Israel Chronicle page.

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13 January 2019

Major Holocaust History Trial in Vilnius on Jan. 15th

Come and Join the Defending History team that will monitor the major Holocaust history trial scheduled in Vilnius for the 15th of January 2019

Almost 7 years after Evaldas Balčiūnas brought the case of Jonas Noreika to the English speaking world. Balčiūnas, for whom the Noreika saga but was one of many instances of his country glorifying Holocaust collaborators, wrote a series of articles that led to years of prosecution and police harassment (see his DH section, scroll down to May 2014 for the saga of the legal proceedings against him). Evaldas, who contributed research to the current trial, will be on hand at the January 15th event in central Vilnius. Come and meet Evaldas.

TUESDAY 15 JANUARY 2019 AT 10 AM AT VILNIUS REGIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE COURT, ŽYGIMANTŲ ST. 2 IN CENTRAL VILNIUS

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In advance of the trial, Identity Films has made its 2012 documentary, Rewriting History, available free online.

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Richard Bloom Productions has released a revised version of its 2013 documentary, Defending Holocaust History.

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Ukraine: Where the Israeli Ambassador Stands Up for Simple Truth About the Holocaust

Ambassador Joel Lion

See reports on HE Ambassador Joel Lion’s public stance in: The Times of Israel & Kyiv Post. A “day and night contrast” with embassy in Lithuania? Just different ambassadors, or a different Foreign Ministry policy?

RELATED: Matti Friedman’s New York Times op-ed on the politicization of Yad Vashem. Cf. Danny Ben-Moshe’s earlier op-ed in Jerusalem Report. See Defending History’s Yad Vashem section for the record of its radical shifts of position over the last decade.

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12 December 2019

Oykh mir a konvenshon tsenter!

Don’t Lithuanian citizens deserve a sparkling new convention center where they will be welcomed by leaders of the arts, entertainment, industry and statecraft, not by the ghosts of the thousands of Vilna Jewish citizens who lie buried on all four sides, in the city’s Old Jewish Cemetery, where their families purchased their burial plots in perpetuity?

by VULOVAK for Defending History

Or, you can try the English version, but with the classic Litvak Yiddish ironic intonation:

This is what you call a convention center ?!?

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◊5 December 2018

Happy Hanukkah

to our readers who celebrate Hanukkah

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Everyone welcome at a lecture by DH editor Prof. Dovid Katz on

“Past, Present & Future of the Litvaks”

hosted by the Vilnius Jewish Community, this Thursday 6 Dec. 2018 at 6 PM at the Jewish Cultural and Information Center at Mėsinių 3 in Vilnius Old Town.

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21 November 2018

Two New Yorkers Take Federal “USCPAHA” Agency to Court in Washington DC

“USCPAHA”, funded by US taxpayers to preserve and protect threatened cemeteries abroad, has for years allegedly colluded with those seeking to site a national convention center complex in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. Now they are being taken to court. Updates. International petition.

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20 November 2018

Riga’s Rabbi Kalev Krelin Courageously Documents Prominent Swastikas at Latvia’s Independence Day Festivities

Original post deleted by Facebook…

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18 November 2018

Under Pressure of Israel’s Foreign Ministry?

Vilnius Genocide Center: “Legitimized” by 19 Nov. Yad Vashem Conference in Jerusalem?

OUR REPORT COMMENT BY GERSHON TAITZ

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11 November 2018

Poland’s 100th Anniversary Celebration in Central Warsaw is Ruined by Far Right Government’s Decision to Include (and Flaunt) Neo-Nazis and Assorted Bigots

Foreign neo-Nazis turned up. European leaders stayed away.

But the day had its heroes; Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz’s attempt to ban the neo-Nazi march on independence day in the capital’s center brought honor to Warsaw and its historic legacy of standing up to fascism

Reports in the Guardian; Haaretz; Hope Not Hate; European Interest; New York Times; Wall Street Journal

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5 November 2018

“BELIEVE IT OR NOT”

Lithuania’s State Sponsored “Genocide Center” Goes to Court to Defend Legacy of Notorious Holocaust Collaborator

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1 November 2018

Member of Lithuanian Gov’s “Red-Brown Commission” Teams Up with Ruta Vanagaite, Best-Selling Author, in Crowdfunding Campaign for a New Book

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21 October 2018

How did Lithuania’s Foreign Minister End Up Together with Defending History’s Editor in Hit Job by Nation’s Top Neo-Nazi Blogger?

“By doing the right thing, and calling for the removal of a central Vilnius plaque that honors a brutal Nazi collaborator”

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LATEST ADDITION TO THE SERIES “OUR EDITOR IN THE NEO-NAZI IMAGINATION”

SEE FULL REPORT

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10 October 2018

Vilnius Says Farewell to

Jacob Piliansky

Courageous Truth Teller and Gifted Wood Sculptor

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5 October 2018

Evaldas Balčiūnas, Bold Lithuanian Author Who Exposed Slew of State Honors for Holocaust Collaborators, Releases Outline of New Play on Museum in Sheduva

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30 September 2018

Did Fareed Zakaria Omit One Important Question in CNN Interview with Ukraine’s President?

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28 September 2018

Real News Network Interviews DH Editor

Topics covered in the interview include East European glorification of Holocaust collaborators, criminalization and delegitimization of dissent, investment in the rise and export of “Double Genocide” Holocaust revisionism and the failure of the US and its allies to stand up for Western values in the current geopolitical context.

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26 September 2018

Ukraine’s State-Sponsored “Azov Battalion” Posts Fascist Inspired Images on Its Own Website

Will NATO, US and Ukraine’s Genuine Friends Publicly Comment?

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23 September 2018

Lithuania’s Sept. 23rd Holocaust Remembrance Day, Marked by Annual Ponár Ceremony and Pope Francis’s Visit to Vilnius Old Town Ghetto Memorial

Defending History’s Eyewitness Report

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IMAGE OF THE DAY: Elected chairperson of the Vilnius Jewish Community, Simon Gurevich, was not allowed past the security barrier, barring him from the Pope’s event to commemorate the Vilna Ghetto. At the earlier event at Ponár, he was not allowed to deliver his prepared remarks.

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22 September 2018

Andrius Kulikauskas asks:

Can Pope Francis, in Vilnius, Heal the Blind at Lukiškės Square?

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21 September 2018

JTA REPORT ON DEFENDING HISTORY’S APPEAL TO POPE FRANCIS ON EVE OF VILNIUS VISIT

“Please ask for a reprieve for the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. A better site can be found for a sparkling new national convention center that the people of Vilnius so deserve. This is about equal human rights. A five-hundred year old Christian cemetery where thousands lie buried would not be the choice for siting a convention center.”

ALSO IN THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

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The Choice at Hand?

OR

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September 2018

ANDREW HIGGINS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Earlier NYT Report by Rod Nordland

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On issues raised in the article:

State glorification of Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika. More street names. More glorification. See Evaldas Balciunas section (scroll to May 2014 for start of the legal action against him for pleading with the state to stop honoring Noreika and multiple other Holocaust perpetrators). Have state agencies targeted other “Holocaust dissidents” for reprisals?

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Cast in stone? Glorified among honorable martyrs on the outside wall of the Genocide Museum, on capital’s main boulevard

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Is the Noreika saga a freshly exposed tip of the vast Double Genocide movement that glorifies collaborators and defames survivors in the interests of “equalizing” Nazi and Soviet crimes? View of the executive director of Lithuania’s lavishly sponsored state commission on the subject. Summary of Double Genocide. Critique by former Yad Vashem director Yitzhak Arad.

Can we accept at face value Netanyahu’s praises for Lithuanian gov. Holocaust policies? See Israel page. Did Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania define a lowpoint in the history of Israeli diplomacy?

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Times article features Vilna born Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg. See DH’s Fridberg section, and his 2014 Person of the Year citation. He has been the subject of personal attack by the state’s “red-brown commission”. In the Jewish world he is perhaps best known for his heartfelt plea in Yiddish, begging the director of New York’s YIVO to disentangle YIVO from the commission and Holocaust revisionism (English translation). At the height of the Rachel Margolis saga, YIVO would not reach out to her, while heaping honors on a gov. official whom the local Jewish community formally accused of antisemitism. Prof. Fridberg was also one of the first members of the Lithuanian Jewish community to publicly protest plans to plonk a national convention center in the middle of the old Jewish cemetery. Today there is an international petition signed by 44,400. Photo: Defending History.

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September 2018

Eva S. Balogh on Hungary’s Plans for New Holocaust Museum;

Rory Yeomans on history fixing in Croatia and Ukraine

Ukraine’s new children’s game glorifying fascist organization complicit in the Holocaust

Anne Applebaum on far-right takeovers in Poland & Hungary (in the Atlantic)

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8 September 2018

Some Jewish Organizations in Hungary Pull Out of Holocaust Museum Project Led by Double Genociders

OTHERS RUSH IN TO FILL VOID, SEEKING GOV. FAVOR; CHABAD GIVEN OWNERSHIP OF MUSEUM!

Analysis by Eva S. Balogh

A plot line familiar across Eastern Europe: State investment in Holocaust commemoration, education, research (plus Jewish, Judaic and Yiddish PR toys), all in the spirit of far-right nationalist history revisionism bent on “equalizing” Nazi and Soviet crimes (and glorifying Nazi collaborators as “anti-Soviet heroes” in the process). For background see: on Holocaust museums in the region; on recent history of Holocaust studies in Lithuania.

On linkage of the specific East European brand of antisemitism to the Double Genocide movement, see new papers by Michael Shafir and Dovid Katz.

The European “Double Genocide Debate” continues to be framed by the 2008 Prague Declaration (PD) and the response: the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration (SYD).

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6 September 2018

To our Readers who Celebrate the Jewish New Year (5779)

אַ געזונט געבענטשט יאָר און אַ גמר חתימה טובה!

Jewish New Year’s gift from Kaunas artist and caricaturist Vulovakas:

By Vulovakas of Kaunas. Lithuanian text. Yiddish text.

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1 September 2018

NEW PAPERS:

Michael Shafir: “The Nature of Postcommunist Antisemitism in East Central Europe: Ideology’s Backdoor Return”

Sam Sokol: “The Butchering of History in Postrevolutionary Ukraine”

Dovid Katz: “The Baltic Movement to Obfuscate the Holocaust” and “Primary Holocaust Inversion and East European Antisemitism” (+ more papers)

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26 August 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s 23-26 Aug. Visit to Vilnius, Lithuania

Ben Cohen’s Coverage in Algemeiner.com Cites Three Defending History Suggestions for the “Lithuanian-Israeli Moral Agenda”

(1) Call for letters of apology for three Israeli citizens defamed for posterity by Vilnius prosecutors: Yitzhak Arad (b. 1926) and Rachel Margolis (1921–2015) and Joseph Melamed (1924–2017). All three fought with the Jewish partisans against the Nazis. Two of the three were decorated heroes of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

(2) Call for rapid removal of street names and plaques that glorify Holocaust collaborators.

(3) Call for moving national convention center project away from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery (international petition tops 44,000).

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Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff, writing in Jerusalem Post, critiques Israel’s ambassador in Lithuania for helping state honor an alleged Holocaust collaborator (DH background here). Op-ed also notes employment difficulties imposed on author Ruta Vanagaite for telling historic truth (DH background on others who have suffered state’s wrath for speaking out). Zuroff goes on to tell JTA that Netanyahu’s praise for Lithuanian gov’s Holocaust policies is “sickening”; in the Jewish Press; also cited by Herb Keinon in the Jerusalem Post; video interview on World Israel News.

SEE TIMES OF ISRAEL REPORT; SECOND REPORT; JTA; JERUSALEM POST; SEE DH’S ISRAEL CHRONICLE PAGE.

SEE MORE

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IN THE NEWS:

Lev Golinkin in the Forward on US & Western Jewish leaders’ failure to speak out with moral clarity on East European state adulation of Nazi collaborators and attempts at revisionism via laws that criminalize free speech & Western narrative of World War II

European Reporter swallows Double Genocide & Holocaust Envy; 23rd August can be the day for remembering Communist crimes without the far right’s “equals sign”. Again, the “Prague Platform” is at work

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3 August 2018

Leaders of Official Lithuanian Jewish Community Finally Join Call for Removal of Vilnius City Center Plaque Honoring a Brutal Holocaust Perpetrator

Six Years after Evaldas Balčiūnas’s 2012 plea on the pages of Defending History, Lithuanian Jewish Community finally calls on government to remove plaque glorifying Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika. Recent courageous essay by Noreika’s granddaughter, Silvia Foti, apparently played key role. JTA report. Andrius Kulikauskas reports on Grant Gochin’s appeal to Vilnius’s “Genocide Center” and the center’s response.

But beloved Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg notes that “taking down one plaque” is not the solution (See also: Pinchos Fridberg section).

As “reward” for his years of pleading with the Lithuanian gov. to stop glorifying Nazi collaborators, DH staff writer Evaldas Balčiūnas was harassed by police, prosecutors and far-right “plaintiffs” for years. See his DH section. Please scroll down to May 2014 to follow the ins-and-outs of the case.

Jada Yuan in the New York Times cites Defending History’s work on the Vilnius museum that changed its name but continues to glorify 1941 Holocaust collaborators

Hungarian government’s pro-Israel, antisemitic politics (Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz)

Council of Europe on neo-fascism in Croatia; Wiesenthal Center exposes inclusion of pro-fascist singer in Croatian football team celebration; Efraim Zuroff follows up with tale of two recent events in Croatia, also critiques Israeli Air Force show in Croatia as “shameful episode”

Sam Sokol in the Jewish Chronicle on glorification of Nazi war criminals in Ukraine; Issue cited in Washington Post coverage of Facebook Holocaust Denial scandal; Arutz Sheva reports: Ukraine’s president announces new official army greetings based on practice of World War II Hitlerist militias.

How will Romania deal with its Holocaust past?

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Late July 2018

Inspired and courageous essay by Silvia Foti, granddaughter of Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika;

New tribute to Lithuania’s righteous rescuers who risked all to just save a neighbor;

Three US senators appeal to Lithuania’s president to spare Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery;

Herbert Block breaks silence ; Paul Packer, head of US Gov’s taxpayer-funded commission on “Heritage Abroad” concludes visit to Vilnius — statement awaited. Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas warns of business consequences for “cemetery convention center” while prime minister’s office refuses to receive Ruta Bloshtein, Vilnius-born, Vilnius-resident author of petition. Meanwhile, London’s “CPJCE Grave-Dealing Rabbis” under “Serious Incident” investigation over Vilnius at the UK’s Charity Commission. Discovery of 2015 video is shock to many.

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July 2018

Lev Golinkin in Foreign Policy on Ukraine’s “approved” fascist chants (covered also by Haaretz); Its Parliament honors Nazi collaborators; But info missing from their English web page

Andrew Srulevitch of ADL slams Nazi slogans in state-approved Lviv parade

Canadian B’nai Brith appeals to Prime Minister Trudeau to stand up to Latvian glorification of Nazi collaborators; National Post reports; Hill Times asks if PM raised these issues in Riga

Rafał Pankowski in Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs on

The Resurgence of Antisemitic Discourse in Poland

Cnaan Liphshiz in JTA:

Estonian Jewish Community Protests Plaque Honoring Country’s Hitlerist Waffen SS

and

Ukrainian General’s Zoological Antisemitism

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June 2018

The Rights of Minority Cemeteries to be Left in Peace are Human Rights

All the more so in post-Holocaust era Eastern Europe where there are no descendants to stand up

But, in “a story for George Orwell,” greedy commercial buildings are going up in one cemetery after another, with the blessings (and boasts of “success”) from wheeler-dealer rabbis and community leaders who “negotiate a memorial to the cemetery” and some ersatz stamp of “Jewish approval” (sometimes complete with sham “reburial-of-bones” ceremonies and PR declaration of “success”). Often this takes place with collusion from London’s CPJCE and the US taxpayer funded USCPAHA whose members sometimes claim to be “pressured by the State Department’s policy of Our East European Allies Never Make Mistakes”. The scandal-ridden agency is sometimes called Washington’s most corrupt federal entity.

This month’s state of affairs at the famous Gwarna Jewish Cemetery in Wroclaw, in western Poland, where the new Best Western hotel nears completion. The last on-site issue is the land adjacent to the hotel: restored cemetery or still more exhumations with sham blessings? (parent chain and local operators). Who’d choose to stay in this hotel? And where in all this is Poland’s National Heritage Law?

This is what they call “saving Jewish Cemeteries in Europe”?

Wroclaw, Poland: Is this how American-born rabbis, London’s CPJCE and the US taxpayer funded USCPAHA “save Jewish cemeteries” in Eastern Europe?

The Defending History community congratulates Agnieszka Jablonska, a Judaic Studies scholar in Wroclaw, Poland, on her courageous reply to the official chief rabbi’s disappointing response to her earlier historic article in Tablet on the fate of the Gwarna Cemetery now nearing completion as a station-side Best Western chain hotel.

See Defending History’s August 2017 report on the Gwarna Cemetery situation, a follow-up providing first publication of Ms. Jablonska’s full report in DH, and her Tablet essay.

It is important to investigate whether or not the Poland issues over the years are related to the allegedly corrupt London based “CPJCE” who were caught red-handed in a Wikileaks cable demanding secret payments for “supervision” in Vilnius, Lithuania, resulting in building and commercialization (Wikileaks, 2015 reports in JTA, JP, ToI, DH). They are now under investigation by the UK Charity Commission. International petition on the old Vilna Jewish cemetery (44,000 signatures), worldwide opposition, recently discovered video.

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23 June 2018

With “extraordinary insensitivity” Vilnius Municipality again endorses Old Town motorcycle gala to celebrate June 23rd, day the Lithuanian Holocaust broke out (initiated by the LAF “heroes” being celebrated)

See Section on June 23rd; LAF; Their leaflets before the war; Videos of survivor memories of the week of 23 June 1941; Glorification of the LAF; of collaborators in Eastern Europe

The Defending History community continues to salute Dr. Valentinas Brandišauskas for his classic rebuttal of A. Liekis’s attempts to glorify the LAF and make its massacres into the basis for a national holiday

EYEWITNESS REPORT

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21 June 2018

Pleading for the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Defending History authors Ruta Bloshtein and Julius Norwilla flank Vilnius’s Rabbi S. J. Feffer, a leading international specialist on the Gaon of Vilna, after a Vilnius City Hall meeting at which they presented the international petition (44,000 signatures), Lithuanian translations of major articles, and a roster of opposition. They also informed officials that the one group of allegedly corrupt London rabbis (the CPJCE) who “gleefully ‘sold’ other people’s graves to the prime minister” was now under investigation, precisely over Vilnius, by the UK Charity Commission’s Serious Incident office.

EYEWITNESS REPORT

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May 2018

EASTERN EUROPE GRAPPLES WITH FAR-RIGHT HISTORY REVISIONISM AND THREATS TO FREE SPEECH

LATVIA: Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps (On Target) replies to Latvian ambassador’s acrobatics on worship of Waffen SS (see Scott Taylor’s earlier article. From archives: Monica Lowenberg takes on Latvian ambassador in London in 2012 and in 2013).

LITHUANIA: Joanna Plucinska in Politico on Lithuania’s proposed new law banning “harmful” books; Chronicle of a 10 year assault on freedom of speech on Holocaust history.

POLAND: Rafal Pankowski, in BICSA’s annual Robert Wistrich Lecture in Berlin, analyzes antisemitism in Poland in 2018.

UKRAINE: Josh Cohen in Kyiv Post: Ukraine’s far-right violence is not Russian propaganda” (see his earlier report); Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty on state funding for neo-Nazis under banner of “patriotic education” (Also in Human Rights). Human Rights Watch addresses government. FreedomHouse.org on how far-right extremism threatens Ukrainian democracy. Also: new debate in Canada on monument to fascist leader, and, over welcome for alleged far-right leader by the Scottish Parliament.

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“Not Just About Eastern Europe”

See the export of efforts to rewrite history to Belgium, Canada, Israel, South Africa, UK, USA, and many other countries

Meantime, Prague Declaration efforts are being revived in the European Parliament in 2018. In 2012, Defending History was proud to co-author the Seventy Years Declaration, boldly signed by eight Lithuanian parliamentarians.

Latest 2018 harbinger of “Double Genocide” revisionism personally attacks authors Efraim Zuroff and Ruta Vanagaite, while offering saccharin red-brown PR at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. She is assistant to a member of parliament who was formerly deputy chairman of the now-defunct “National Democrats Party” (Neo-Nazis).

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FROM OUR TEAM IN VILNIUS:

Sources in London: Solicitors instructed by international group whose ancestors are buried in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to take legal action against the CPJCE with “court action to be announced by the end of July 2018”

Dramatic Youtube video: Shocking scene of CPJCE-ers allegedly coming to “sell” the prime minister of Lithuania the old Vilna Jewish cemetery as grounds for a new convention center. International opposition to the convention center project is mounting by the day. Ruta Bloshtein’s international petition tops 43,500 signatures. Her latest update

Jewish Chronicle: Ruta Vanagaite honored in Brussels by Conference of European Rabbis for telling the simple truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust (only to have her books effectively banned in Lithuania: after Oct. 2017 diatribe by major politician, publisher pulled all her books from bookstore and internet sales)

JTA on the Lithuanian Jewish community’s valiant call for democracy and honest elections. Eyewitness report on 28 May 2018 demonstration

Vilnius Marks Birthdays of Three of its Extraordinary Jewish Figures:

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (96)

Milan Chersonski (80)

Pinchos Fridberg (80)

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May 2018

KEEPING TRACK

LEV GOLINKIN IN THE FORWARD ON SHOCKING ANTISEMITISM IN UKRAINE; HIS INTERVIEW WITH ABC’S JOHN BATCHELOR; MORE FROM UKRAINE

AND FROM NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT

CONGRATULATIONS TO RUTA VANAGAITE ON AWARD FROM THE CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS IN BRUSSELS

JULIUS NORWILLA’S NEW POSTER EXHIBIT ON THE OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY

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SENSATIONAL 2015 VIDEO NOW ON YOU TUBE

Did London “CPJCE” Rabbis Come to Vilnius to “Permit” A Convention Center in the Heart of City’s Old Jewish Cemetery in Defiance of All Major Rabbis on the Planet (Plus Those in Vilnius…)

The incredible story. When their spokesman “explained” to the media that a derelict, hated, Soviet-era ruin now on the cemetery is the “Tower of London and Statue of Liberty” to the Lithuanian people. Why this zealous attachment to desecration of a sacred Jewish cemetery in Vilna? What does the rest of the world think? Ms. Ruta Bloshtein, a religious Jewish woman in Vilnius started a petition. It’s now approaching 44,000 signatures. See her LATEST UPDATE (MAY 2018).

The London CPJCE has since been exposed by Wikileaks, and in reports in the Jerusalem Post, JTA, and Times of Israel, for taking secret payments for their clandestine, acquiescent agreement. What happened to transparency? Most recently, the elected head of the Vilnius Jewish Community has spoken out forcefully in the New York Times.

Are they abusing a venerable rabbi in his late 90s for these schemes?

London CPJCE Rabbis, including Rabbi Herschel Gluck OBE, come to offer gleeful permissions for a new convention center and massive annex in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery in April 2015. On the video, they meet with the nation’s then prime minister who cannot contain his own glee (and who told the press how surprised he was that it was “so easy”). The three resident Vilnius rabbis in town that day were not even informed of the meeting; the country’s then chief rabbi was then fired for daring to disagree with the Londoners’ “permission”. All other rabbis on the planet, including the greatest yeshiva heads in the Lithuanian tradition, have begged the government to move the convention center elsewhere and restore the medieval Jewish cemetery where thousands still lie buried.

Lev Golinkin in the LA Times:

US Jewish Leaders Outspoken on Mideast, but Shrink from Discussing East European Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial◊

City Council of New Britain, Connecticut Passes Resolution Cancelling Plans for Monument Honoring Alleged Nazi Collaborator; The Timeline◊

From Vilnius, Ruta Bloshtein updates her 43,000 petition signers on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, calling on signers to contact the Charities Commission in the UK. If it were a non-Jewish cemetery, the government would not be building a national convention center over the remains of thousands of Vilna citizens whose families purchased their final resting places in perpetuity.

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April 2018

“Amazing Berliners” Open their Homes First Weekend in May to Remember “Those who Once Lived Here” (FT Report)

Hopes Rising that East European Cities will Follow

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57 US Congressman Condemn Holocaust Distortion in Ukraine and Poland & Laws Criminalizing Free Speech on Topic

DH’s Report; PDF of the Letter; Sam Sokol in Open Democracy; Dovid Katz in Jewish Currents: “But Poland’s law is not the worst”; JTA report cites Defending History’s decade of work documenting East European governmental distortion of history.

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April 2018

OUR ISSUES IN THE NEWS

Montreal’s Holocaust Museum postpones exhibit on heroic Polish resistance hero Jan Karski in wake of current Polish issues

Three Nazi flags hoisted on Vilnius bridges on Hitler’s April 20 birthday; Official Jewish community reacts

Rabbi Dan Fink of Boise, Idaho, year after visit to Lithuania, still shocked at behavior of local Catholic Church during the Holocaust; Yitzhak Arad’s historical summary

Dovid Katz’s take on Vilnius’s “Genocide Museum” in Tablet; Recent New York Times news report on museum’s continuing capacity for shocking visitors to Lithuania’s capital

JTA on opposition to Riga’s annual Waffen SS glorification march, including, this year, one Riga woman’s inspiring vigil to remember Holocaust victims; But article omits many years of effective work by one London woman, whose international petition (and blog) reached thousands; she dialogued with Latvia’s embassy in London, and the UK Foreign Ministry leading to notable revelations regarding actual policies of EU/NATO states toward East European glorification of Nazi collaborators.

Christian Science Monitor’s Harry Bruinius covers nationalist based state antisemitism in Hungary

Brussels, and firm of eminent London architects roped into new “red=brown” Double Genocide project sponsored by East European far right’s “Prague Platform”?

HOPEFULLY THEY WILL LOOK AT EXACTLY WHAT’S BEHIND THIS PROJECT AND JUST SAY NO

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April 2018

“It Always Pays to Stand Up and Defend History”

Elected Leaders of New Britain, Connecticut Cancel Lithuanian Gov. Project to Plonk a Monument to an Alleged 1941 Holocaust Collaborator on Public Land

“MAJOR SUCCESS” IN EFFORTS TO HALT THE EXPORT OF “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” HISTORY REVISIONISM TO THE WEST

Hero of the saga is City Council alderman Professor Aram Ayalon. His petition and active contacts with colleagues internationally brought rapid results

Professor Aram Ayalon, alderman on the city council of New Britain, Connecticut

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New Britain Progressive report cites DH role.

Defending History broke the news first, on 14 January 2018.

Chronicle of a saga: DH’s section on New Britain.

Major documents include essays by a leading Lithuanian ethicist, Evaldas Balčiūnas (2014 and 2017) on the alleged 1941 perpetrator for whom a massive monument was slated for a “separate square” right near New Britain’s beloved Museum of American Art. Most council members were not even aware of the secretive plan, while proposed Lithuanian government financing was guaranteed, even as inquirers were told it was a local church that was the sponsor. The project was managed by the Lithuanian Consulate in New York.

Evaldas Balčiūnas, key writer at DH, was finally found “Not Guilty” in 2016 after years of nuisance court cases brought to harass him for his articles protesting the glorification by his government of alleged Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators. Back in 2014, he warned about the one who’d be slated for a monument in New Britain, Connecticut in 2018. See his section in Defending History.

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Justin Dorsey at the New Britain mayor’s office: “There will be no monument recognizing this individual.”

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1 April 2018

New York Times covers history debates that rage on in Eastern Europe; Haaretz publishes Hebrew translation; Targum Shlishi reposts its recent report; Oxford Review of Books interviews DH editor. In Germany’s Jungle World.

Will New Britain, Connecticut really allow a public monument to an alleged Nazi collaborator? City Council member Professor Aram Ayalon launches petition; Latest. Will Mayor Erin E. Stewart break her silence with some rapid words of simple moral clarity? This is even worse than Charlottesville: It’s about putting up a new monument for an alleged Nazi collaborator on public land in Connecticut. Where’s leadership? See DH’s new section on New Britain, Connecticut. This is not a “Lithuanian-Jewish issue”; One of Lithuania’s leading ethicists, Evaldas Balčiūnas leads the way for people of good will in his 2014 and 2017 essays on the figure for whom the New Britain monument is planned.

42,500 sign petition by Ruta Bloshtein of Vilnius, begging Lithuanian government to move national convention center project away from Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery; Please consider signing!

FROM THE LAST DECADE:

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha, Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, Mark Ames in The Nation, and Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger (2011); Danny Ben-Moshe in his film Rewriting History (2012); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Richard Bloom in his film Defending Holocaust History (2014); Daniel Brook in Slate (2015); Larry Yudelson in Jewish Standard (2016); Rod Nordland in The New York Times (2018)

Poland has been rightly criticized for a 2018 law criminalizing free speech about the Holocaust but other countries have passed rather worse laws, including Hungary (2010), Lithuania (2010), Estonia (2012), Latvia (2014) and Ukraine (2015). People have lost their employment and been pursued by authorities, via prosecutors or just campaigns of defamation, for speaking out. April 3rd update: Lithuania’s economy minister (!) proposes law banning books on history the government doesn’t like.

Did the Israeli Foreign Ministry really decide to compromise Holocaust history or was this a fluke of one hapless embassy?

Will New York’s YIVO Institute finally stop legitimizing Lithuanian Double Genocide industry’s far right Red-Brown Commission which just held a conference honoring an alleged Holocaust collaborator?

Honoring Lithuania’s 100th Birthday

With an exhibit on nation’s interwar harmonious multiculturalism, and celebration of one of the 1918 independence war’s great heroes. Some of Lithuania’s most inspiring truth tellers today are DH regulars, including Evaldas Balciunas, Andrius Kulikauskas, and Julius Norwilla. Many more over the years.

Defending History was the only human rights group in Lithuania to monitor the recent neo-Nazi marches in central Vilnius, on nation’s 16 February and 11 March independence days. We do it every year.

What is it all about? The grand debate over Holocaust history and its “European declarations”: The Prague Declaration and Defending History’s response — Seventy Years Declaration (SYD)

Are famous Jewish personalities from the West becoming fellow travelers of the new Holocaust revisionism when blinded by medals, honors, photo-ops with politicians, junkets, and grants?

Will Indiana University’s Borns Jewish Studies Program in Bloomington forever prop up a hijacked Yiddish institute in faraway Vilnius that serves to promote Holocaust revisionism?

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29 March 2018

DH NEWS FEED

Vilnius goodwill: Rabbi S. J. Feffer, a leading campaigner for saving Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, invites “the whole city — people of any religion and none” to his free Passover séyder, Friday 30 March 8:30 PM at the Narutis Hotel in Vilnius. “No tickets, no registration, just come!”

Paul Simon interviews Dovid Katz on Double Genocide, history revisionism, and Germany’s “quiet role”

Ukraine’s far-right OUN launches campaign against Babi Yar Holocaust museum project

Vilnius: Simon Gurevich (Gurevičius), elected leader of Vilnius Jewish Community, blasts fake-election ersatz LJC leaders, calls for rapid new & transparent elections

27 March 2018 marked the fourth yórtsayt (death anniversary) of

Dr. Shimon Alperovich

Visionary leader of the Jewish Community of Lithuania who treated every human being with the highest respect and dignity. He also spoke out with integrity, courage and moral clarity on Jewish values, Holocaust revisionism, Double Genocide, the campaign to defame Jewish partisan heroes, and state projects to glorify the collaborators.

Efraim Zuroff in the Jerusalem Post on Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe

Cnaan Lifshiz’s JTA report on Waffen SS march in central Riga

11 March 2018

Defending History Monitors the March 11th Neo-Nazi March in Central Vilnius

Celebrating Lithuania’s independence and success and also, as each year, monitoring the neo-Nazi march for which the center of Vilnius is gifted (on this of all days). See our eyewitness report. Defending History’s reports from the last decade of marches marches in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Riga.

OTHER EVENTS IN VILNIUS AND RIGA IN THE WEEK OF 11 MARCH 2018

RECENT REPORTS

Lithuanian government’s “Red-Brown Commission,” a prime engine of Prague Declaration “Double Genocide” politics, boasts of conference honoring alleged 1941 Holocaust collaborator.

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Forgotten Yiddish poem by Jewish partisan poet Hirsh Glik, whose Zog nit keynmol became the partisan hymn.

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New voices rise up on the humiliation, destruction and commercialization of East European Jewish cemeteries: Israel’s chief rabbi and rabbi of nation’s holy sites plead with Lithuanian president on the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės). And, from Wroclaw, Poland, the voice of a young Polish scholar, Angieszka Jablonska documents similar events , in DH, and now in Tablet magazine in the US. The days of the London-based “CPJCE” representing themselves as saving these cemeteries are coming to an end. Jewish cemeteries on ground zero of the Holocaust must, as a matter of human rights, be treated with the same dignity as Christian and other burial sites.

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March 2015

It’s Baltic Marching Season Time…

The Defending History community protests the annual “Baltic Marching Season” in which states and major cities gift their most prestigious city centers for pro-Nazi marches that brim with racism and ethnic hatred, sometimes on cherished national holidays. Where are the local voices of dissent? The lavishly financed human rights monitoring organizations? Western voices? A media that reports?

Vilnius, 16 February 2018

Tallinn, 24 February 2018

Vilnius (/Kaunas?), 11 March 2018

Riga, 16 March 2018

28 February – March 2018

TO OUR READERS WHO CELEBRATE PURIM:

A HAPPY PURIM! (28 Feb — 1 March 2018)

WELCOME TO A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK OF ESTHER INTO LITHUANIAN YIDDISH… AND TO A DIALECT MAP OF THE NAME FOR THE BELOVED PURIM PASTRY RECALLED BY THE LAST YIDDISH SPEAKING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN NORTHEASTERN EUROPE

16 February 2018

Lithuania Celebrates its 100th in February 2018

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITHUANIA!

January-February 2018

Volha Charnysh and Evgeny Finkel on Rewriting History in Eastern Europe (in Foreign Affairs)

Lev Golinkin on Holocaust Deceptions in Ukraine and Beyond (in the New York Times)

Josh Cohen on Ukraine’s Holocaust Manipulations (in The National Interest)

Dovid Katz on “Double Genocide” (in Jewish Currents), and the Manipulation of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania (in Dapim)

Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) in the Jerusalem Post & Times of Israel

Israel Knesset Member Ksenia Svetlova in the Jerusalem Post; Also: All-time lowpoint of Israeli diplomacy? See DH’s Israel Chronicle page and Israel Section

Clemens Heni on WDR German Radio

Evaldas Balčiūnas in Defending History (and the follow-on debate about New Britain, Connecticut)

London’s “CPJCE” Grave-Betraying Rabbis and the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Is YIVO being manipulated to cover for ongoing East European Holocaust revisionism?

Defending History in Targum Shlishi

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SOME “LOCAL” QUESTIONS FOR HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY, 27 JANUARY 2018:

Does the Lithuanian government really want to name 2018 for an alleged Holocaust collaborator?

Does the city of New Britain, Connecticut really want to erect a monument for the same alleged collaborator?

Will the city of Kaunas, named Capital of European Culture for 2022, take rapid action to move away from city center the annual Feb. 16th independence day neo-Nazi parade that often glorifies actual local collaborators? Announcement of this year’s Feb 16th event.

So far, less than morally solid reactions from the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; silence from ADL etc. Soon to be rectified?

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BRAVO TO LIEBE GEFT: Breaking with American Jewish organizations’ timidity, Liebe Geft, head of the Wiesenthal Center’s Tolerance Museum in Los Angeles, critiques the Prague Declaration’s support for “Double Genocide” revisionism in run-up to Toronto conference to be held on 27-28 Jan. 2018; More on the (2008) Prague Declaration and Defending History’s response, the (2012) Seventy Years Declaration. What is Double Genocide? Has it been snuck into some Holocaust educational programs and museums? Our editor’s take. Danny Ben-Moshe’s documentary film Rewriting History.

FALSIFIED HOLOCAUST PHOTO again used in Ukrainian media’s effort to manipulate history.

NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT: Does this town really need a brand-new monument glorifying an alleged Holocaust collaborator?

CHIEF RABBI OF ISRAEL calls on president of Lithuania to cancel project of a convention center atop thousands of Jewish graves in Vilnius. International opposition continues to mount. Because of the Holocaust, these people have no descendants or relatives to protect their paid-for final resting place. Because of ongoing bias, Jewish burial sites in Eastern Europe are not treated with the same respect as others.

A ONCE-IN-A-CENTURY OPPORTUNITY FOR KAUNAS (Kovno, Kóvne), Lithuania’s 2nd city, which has been named “Capital of European Culture” for 2022. Hopefully, the city’s leaders will act rapidly to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January and to scrap the city center’s February 16th independence day neo-Nazi march starting this year, while taking down street signs and a Vytautas Magnus University lecture hall name that actually glorify Holocaust collaborators. In the meantime, the city’s tiny religious Jewish community has produced a medallion in Yiddish to honor the 200th anniversary of the birth of the city’s famed Rabbi Yitskhok Elkhonon Spector.

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15-22 January 2018

Our Team Joins with Human Rights Advocates Everywhere to Celebrate

Martin Luther King Week 2018

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1 January 2018

Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė

Defending History’s 2018 Person of the Year

IN HONOR OF THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MODERN LITHUANIAN STATE IN 1918

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Evaldas Balčiūnas asks:

Is it Really a Good Idea for Politicians to Name 2018 in Honor of Someone who Led a Pro-Nazi Squad during the Outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust in June-July 1941?

In a country with a grand thousand year legacy of innumerable true heroes, including those who established the modern democratic state in 1918? On the centenary of that incredible achievement? Editor’s take. DH’s centenary tribute. [JANUARY 2018 UPDATE: DH’s 2018 PERSON OF THE YEAR.]

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28 December 2017

Democratically Elected Vilnius Jewish Community’s Council Calls for Clean, Fresh Elections for National Community’s Leadership

The democratically elected 21-member Council of the Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) calls for new, free and fair elections for Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC) leadership positions (English text here). The call follows the 21 Dec 2017 court ruling invalidating last spring’s “kangaroo elections” in which the thousands of living Jewish people were disenfranchised and replaced by a roomful of “board members”. More background.

UPDATES TO 29 DEC: JTA report appearing also in Arutz Sheva, The Times of Israel, Times of Israel in French, Forward; see also: Isra.com

ALSO: Latest “Good Will Foundation” figures show New York’s Edward Blank Yivo Digitization Project again muscling in on the last assets intended for Lithuania’s current Jewish people from the plundered religious properties of the annihilated religious communities (as PDF). Has the community been polled on this or other major allocations? State’s “Red-Brown Commission” continues to boast of Yivo’s membership and support for gov. Holocaust policies. See Vilna Holocaust survivor’s heartfelt plea to director of Yivo. Is Edward Blank aware of what’s going on?

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19 December 2017

What’s the Moral Legacy of those People “Behind” the Scattered Gravestones of Vilna?

Professor Sid Leiman tells the story of Vilnius citizen Abba-Menachem Kremerman, who died at 15 in 1939, and — the story of what happened to his gravestone in late 2017. The bizarre results of Vilnius authorities’ decision last month to dump 1000 Jewish gravestones from one cemetery onto the territory of another to deflect attention from international shock at plans for a national convention center in the “recipient” cemetery’s heart (with photos by Julius Norwilla)

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Dovid Katz’s new paper on Holocaust Studies in Lithuania

New in Yiddish: Virtual Mini-Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania

11 December 2017

US Government Rep Agrees with Defending History on Need for National Convention Center Project to be Moved Away from Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Head of the Committee on the Old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery for the US government’s Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad (USCPAHA), Herbert Block (left) with Defending History editor Dovid Katz after two Vilnius meetings in mid December 2017 resulted in full agreement on the need for the national convention center project to be moved away from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės). See report. Meanwhile, international consensus comes into focus with growing support within Lithuania, including its Jewish community.

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In the News in Dec. 2017

Israeli Foreign Ministry crosses “red Holocaust line” and offers PR support for Lithuanian parliament’s decision to name 2018 for alleged Holocaust collaborator; Weekly of Vilnius comments; Israeli ambassador’s Vilnius antics end in major fiasco

In major interview with Frankfurter Rundschau, Clemens Heni explains the part of Holocaust relativization in current European antisemitism; Notes vintage of the 2008 Prague Declaration

Danny Ben-Moshe’s documentary film Rewriting History on the Double Genocide movement and the ensuing conflicts and adventures in Lithuania and the European Union now available online for the first time

Vilnius District Court rules that official (gov. sponsored) “Lithuanian Jewish Community” elections of May 2017 were rigged; chairperson seems to cling to power on a dubious legal basis amid growing calls for clean new elections

Vilna Studies: Harvard University’s Leyzer Ran Catalog by Charles Berlin is now available online

Masha Gessen interviews Ruta Vanagaite in the New Yorker. PEN America protests ban on her books. Follow the saga (in English) with Defending History

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8 December 2017

Josh Cohen’s Eyewitness Report: Vanagaite-Zuroff Event at Washington’s Wilson Center: Lithuanian Ambassador Publicly Accuses Vanagaite of Putinist Collusion

Meanwhile, in Vilnius, state sponsored Red-Brown Commission chief Ronaldas Račinskas attacks Vanagaite’s book and speaking tour (“lies about Lithuania’s past and present”). In 2008, he started purge of Yiddish institute, now “led” by fellow Red-Brown Commission member. In 2013 he defamed prominent Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg as “liar” for having corrected an error. Commission chief’s “classic” video formulation of Double Genocide in connection with defamed Jewish partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky. His denial of early LAF violence against Lithuanian Jewry in June 1941.

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In November 2017

Wall of “Mainstream Media Hush-Up” for East European Glorification of Nazi Collaborators Begins to Crumble

**“Defending History was the first to get there”**

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Newsweek, following History News Network, exposes the BBC’s peddling of fake history of Ukrainian ultranationalism; for background see Josh Cohen in Foreign Policy in 2016

LA Times on America’s disturbing UN vote concerning condemnation of Nazi glorification; also in the Independent; for background see Dovid Katz in Times of Israel in 2014

Jan Gross in the New York Times on neo-fascism in Poland; Haaretz on the situation in Poland

The National Interest on Lithuania’s persecution of Ruta Vanagaite and other recent East European episodes; PEN America’s public protest; for background see Defending History’s take

Ottawa Citizen on Ukrainian pro-Nazi monuments in Canada; see Defending History’s Canada section

Lev Golinkin in The Hill on neo-nazism in today’s Ukraine

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In the Late 2017 Battle of Ideas

Chona Leibovich (Leibovič), proud member of the Vilnius Jewish Community, writes with inspiring courage on the Nazi legacy of many “national-hero partisans” in Lithuania in major news portal Delfi.lt

Dovid Katz in Dapim on the extraordinary recent history of Holocaust studies in Lithuania (PDF of proof only)

Alexandra Kudukis interviews Grant Gochin in I am Lietuva (International Lithuanian Federation) on the damage Lithuania’s leaders inflict on the country by glorifying Holocaust collaborators via monuments, street names, and state accolades while deflecting questions with the trope that critics are “Russian lackeys”

Clemens Heni in The Times of Israel on the shocking new tendency of some Jewish groups to tolerate or support the American Alt Right and the European Far Right

Julius Norwilla in DH on the latest farcical attempt to “memorialize” the old Vilna Jewish cemetery by shlepping some gravestones there for a “monument” — as lame diversion for plan underway to plonk a sparkling national convention center surrounded by thousands of Vilna Jewish graves

Andrius Kulikauskas in DH: Celebrations of the centenary of semiotician Algirdas Julius Greimas can include also a thought for his victims

Dovid Katz in Jewish Currents: Double Genocide IS the new Holocaust Denial

NEW SECTIONS IN LITHUANIAN AND IN RUSSIAN; NEW YIDDISH SECTION ON JEWISH CULTURE IN INTERWAR LITHUANIA IS LAUNCHED (SUPPLEMENT TO VILNA YIDDISH MINI-MUSEUM PROJECT)

FROM NEAR AND FAR IN NOV. 2017

Warsaw: Jan Gross in the New York Times on fascist manifestations in Poland

Berlin: A European journal on antisemitism that does not fear to tackle the East European Holocaust Obfuscation movement

Tel Aviv: Joe Melamed’s Shlóyshim came and went. But which of the Israeli “Litvak organizations” will be hosting a public event? Will the Israeli Embassy in Vilnius utter a solitary word, or is Melamed in the “Dov Levin” category? the Rachel Margolis category? Where is the Vilnius Israeli embassy’s loyalty to its own citizens?

Washington DC: Efraim Zuroff and Ruta Vanagaite will speak on 7 Dec. on “The Holocaust & Historical Memory Wars in Lithuania” at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. Some background here, and here

Harvard: Harvard University releases catalogue of the Leyzer Ran Collection on old Jewish Vilna; Also: Dec 11th lecture by Efraim Zuroff and Ruta Vanagaite

Kiev: Senior Ukraine official hints at antisemitic violence if Jewish citizens disagree about glorification of alleged war criminals; Meanwhile, Minister for Infrastracture announces plan to actually build “the Road to Bandera”

Vilnius: Another “Rigged antisemitism conference”?

Mariampole (Lithuania; Yiddish—Maryámpl, Márnpol): Day-long event to introduce people to Lithuanian Jewish culture on 28 Nov.

London: Annual “Litvak Days” charade to feature on 29 and 30 Nov.

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2 November 2017

Trending in October 2017

Prague and Brussels

First shot fired in bizarre new battle for European history. Far-right “Prague Platform” (funded by EU taxpayers) charges that Brussels “House of European History” Plan has “Neo-Marxist message”

Latvia

In Riga, Latvia, court punishes an anti-Nazi demonstrator for his placard showing Nazi violence of 1941; he was a counter-demonstrator at this year’s Waffen-SS march. Now also in Jewish Currents (NY). See Latvia and Riga’s Waffen SS marches sections.

Ukraine

Ukraine’s President Proshenko abuses Holocaust photo on Twitter; Svoboda regional leader threatens Jewish citizens who may disagree with public honors for Ukrainian pogrom-meisters; Meantime, Infrastructure Minister announces plans for actually building a “Road to Bandera”…

Ukrainian city, Kalush, names street in honor of Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer; Bold citizen challenges the decision in court; JTA report; Also: WJC decries new monument in Vinnitsa for pogrom-meister Petliura

Radio Free Europe reports up to 20,000 participated in October 14th march in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev to glorify the UPA, a major fascist group that collaborated in the Holocaust; Nazi salutes documented

Israeli ambassador to Ukraine speaks out on repeated state honoring of major antisemitic figures. See Ukraine section.

Lithuania

Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius), elected head of Vilnius Jewish Community, calls on school in Šiauliai (Shavl) to reject a plan for it to be renamed in honor of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika. Reports in Lithuanian and Russian.

Lithuania’s prime minister says convention center on old Jewish cemetery will “lift” nation’s capital

Can a program to “help” a city’s Roma do more harm than good?

Linas Vildžiūnas, a leading intellectual in Lithuania, reviews Rūta Vanagaitė’s book on the Holocaust — his review now in English translation

Will a deeply disturbing “Litvak postage stamp” be withdrawn?

Professor Josifas Parisonas on need for democracy in Lithuanian Jewish Community. See Lithuania section.

Antisemitism Studies

Clemens Heni in Times of Israel on the specificity of antisemitism in light of “post-colonial studies”

ISGAP’s Flashpoint series

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29 October 2017

יוסף (יאָסקע) מלמד ז″ל

Joe Melamed (1924-2017)

Greatest of the Litvak Champions, Joe Melamed, Dies at 93 in Tel Aviv. Litvak world in mourning as his inspiring life comes into sharper focus, not least his robust and courageous activism over his last decade. Update: Images from the last years.

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21 October 2017

כאַסיע לאַנגבאָרד שפּאַנערפליג ע″ה

Chasia Langbord Shpanerflig (1921 — 2017)

Photo © DefendingHistory.com

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NEW SECTIONS: “SYMBOLOGY”; ARTICLES IN LITHUANIAN ON THE OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY; plus NEW COUNTRY SECTIONS: IRELAND; NORWAY

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27 September 2017

A NEW FILM

Vilnius screening of The Last Sunday in August, major new documentary film on the Holocaust in Lithuania, focused on Malát (Molėtai) in eastern Lithuania, is so far ignored by mainstream media and the “Double Genocide Industry”. To date: not one media outlet has published a review. The film documents the murder of all 2,000 Jews of the shtetl in one day (29 August 1941), entirely by enthusiastic, volunteer local murderers working for the German Nazi occupiers of their own country, who killed all of their own neighbors who were Jewish. There was not a single rescuer in the town (but there were incredibly brave Righteous in the surrounding countryside). It also documents those inspiringly courageous Lithuanian citizens today who are determined to tell the simple truth. Defending History calls on the film’s producers to make it very rapidly widely available. The film’s historic narrative and moral message are a precise opposite of the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes of Lithuania” (“red-brown commission”) that specializes in spewing moral confusion and doubletalk.

A NEW POSTAGE STAMP

Well-intentioned postage stamp honoring Litvaks goes disastrously wrong, incorporating a nationalist symbol which Holocaust survivors and Lithuanian Jews associate with Nazi and neo-Nazi usage, from the Holocaust to the present day. It also insults the nation’s proud Yiddish heritage. Hopefully the Postal Service and the government will now do the right thing and rapidly withdraw it from circulation. It is causing wholly unnecessary pain all around.

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September 2017

QUESTION OF THE MONTH: Is there a renewed initiative to talk EU Commission President Juncker into embracing Eastern Europe’s “Double Genocide Industry” mantra about all of Europe needing to accept a “unified history” = the claim that Prague Declaration Holocaust revisionism is the one acceptable history (as per the criminalization of dissent in some East European countries)?

BACKGROUND: The 2008 Tallinn proclamation and UK MP John Mann’s Response in the House of Commons; On the 2008 Prague Declaration; The 2012 Seventy Years Declaration; Sample attempt to (ab)use the “United Europe United History” slogan; Criminalization of dissenting views in Eastern Europe (Latvia; Lithuania; Ukraine). Fate of an earlier attempt to manipulate the EU into “legislating” history as per eastern states’ demands.

19 September 2017

All welcome at this Sunday’s Vilnius showing of the new film The Last Sunday in August about Malát (Molėtai). 24 September 2017 at 6 PM at the Ozas Multi Cinema, Ozo 18, Vilnius 08009. Admission free but pre-registration required (phone or SMS: +3706 718-6202 or +3706 153-9950). For background see DH’s Malát section. Trailer for the film.

Would Ukraine really want to compromise its international integrity by naming “Stepan Bandera University” in Lviv? More on Stepan Bandera, head of groups that murdered hundreds of thousands of civilian Jews and Poles in the Hitler era. DH recommends G. Rossolinski-Liebe’s indispensable book.

Yet another “Roma Integration Project” goes badly wrong in Vilnius

Opinion piece on next week’s conference on The Shtetl, to be held at the Lithuanian parliament

All welcome at opening of the Nechama Lifschitz Exhibit at the Tolerance Center (Naugarduko 10/2, Vilnius, +3705 231-2357) at 6 PM on 25 September 2017

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8 September 2017

Defending History Brings Results

Lithuanian Gov. Announces Name Change for a Far-Right History-Distorting “Genocide Museum”

“COURAGEOUS STEP”; DEFENDING HISTORY SAYS: CONGRATULATIONS!

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2 September 2017

Vilnius Celebrates Milan Chersonski’s 80th Birthday on September 2nd 2017

אַ ליכטיקן געבאָרנטאָג, טײַערער מילאַן!

Holocaust flight survivor. Powerful essayist and masterful editor. For 20 years he directed the Vilnius Yiddish Folk Theater. Then, for a dozen years he edited Jerusalem of Lithuania, the Jewish community’s quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper (with each issue produced in four separate editions). Beloved writer at DefendingHistory.com. Champion for Jewish and human rights causes, freedom of speech, and a just and fair society for all. Vilnius says: Happy Birthday, Milan!

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1 September 2017

TRENDING AT DEFENDING

Josh Cohen on the moral aspect of US-Ukraine relations (Reuters)

Pinchos Fridberg on current trajectory of “Double Genocide” (Strajk.eu)

Zev Friedman on New York meeting with mayor of Vilnius [5 Towns Jewish Times]

Dovid Katz on NATO’s new gung-ho film (Algemeiner.com)

Nehro Khalil on US Congressional appeal on Old Vilnius cemetery [Weekly of Vilnius]

Andrius Kulikauskas on a new center named for an ethnic-cleansing advocate

Cnaan Liphshiz on troops that train over graves of Holocaust victims in Kaunas (JTA)

Julius Norwilla on drive to save old Vilnius cemetery (Bernardinai.lt)

Efraim Zuroff on antisemitism in Eastern Europe (Arutz Sheva)

Latest in DefendingHistory.com

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23 August 2017

8 East European Countries Issue New Call for Double Genocide, Demanding “Equal” Status for Nazi and Soviet Crimes

Call comes from the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, & Slovakia

EU Taxpayer Financed “Prague Platform” Plays Key Role in the Ongoing Orchestration. Meanwhile, “Platform” boasts that its new competition for a mix-n-match red-brown memorial is “under the High Patronage of the European Parliament”. It’s “Bible” is the 2008 Prague Declaration (PD). Defending History working with 71 Euro-parliamentarians (including eight very courageous Lithuanian legislators) countered with the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration (SYD); its text in European languages.

by Irina Izhogina for DefendingHistory.com

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Defending History’s comment: “Instead of simply highlighting the legitimate need to recognize, condemn, study and memorialize Communist crimes, as a distinct issue, the injection of “equality” by eight (only East European!) countries, once again underscores the far-right ultranationalist drive to obfuscate and downgrade the Holocaust by way of “Prague Declaration” style ruses to invoke a bogus equivalence between Nazism and Communism. One of the prime motives is to write the massive local collaboration (and in some countries active participation) in the Holocaust out of history, while finding cunning ways to glorify local Holocaust collaborators as “heroes”. It is high time for the West, once again, to Just Say No.”

More on Double Genocide: Shimon Alperovich, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Yitzhak Arad, Evaldas Balciunas, Yehuda Bauer, Danny Ben-Moshe, Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Jonathan Freedland, Pinchos Fridberg, Clemens Heni, Dovid Katz, Rachel Kostanian, Denis MacShane, John Mann, Efraim Zuroff

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August 2017

12 US Congressmen Call on Lithuania’s President to Move Convention Center Project Away from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

LITE-Vulovak-on-national-convention-center-opening

by Vulovak for DefendingHistory.com

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After publication by Defending History, rapid response comes from president of Lithuania, foreign minister, advisor to PM, and others. They refer to “permissions” from the markedly controversial London rabbis of the “CPJCE” exposed by Wikileaks, Jerusalem Post, JTA, and DH (no mention of the overwhelming international and local opposition or 40,000 petition signatories); also from the “official” Jewish community whose leadership allegedly rigged elections last spring to stay in power; no mention in politicians’ statements of gov. consulting also with the democratically elected 21 members of the Vilnius Jewish Community’s Council. But Vilnius broadcast media went to Vilnius community’s leader too. Professor Sid (Shnayer) Leiman (New York) responds to the president of Lithuania. Petition author Ruta Bloshtein (Vilnius) responds.

International media coverage — JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), Times of Israel (French edition), Hamodia, Five Towns Jewish Times, (2), Professor Sid Leiman responds to Lithuania’s president.

Baltic media coverage (in Lithuanian, English, Polish, Russian) — 15min.lt, Baltnews.lt, BNS via Lithuania Tribune (2), Delfi.lt, eajc.org, Kurier.lt, LJC, LNK (at: 13:40), LRT.lt/mediateka, Lzinios.lt, NovayaGazeta.ee, Obzor.lt, TV3.lt, Weekly of Vilnius, Wilnoteka.lt; Ruta Bloshtein’s petition update.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF VILNIUS TV & RADIO DISCUSSIONS

International petition passes 40,000 signature mark. Pleas from around the world continue to mount.

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August 2017

NATO Must Stand For Western Values

Our take? Putin’s shameful “Zapad 17” military exercise demo, in regions bordering the eastern democratic lands of NATO and the EU, intended to intimidate their peaceful populations, needs to be exposed for what it is and countered with stalwart determination. That makes it all the more critical for NATO (and the EU) not to succumb to regional far-right, ultranationalist, chauvinist, Holocaust-revisionist, and antisemitic forces in the course of the proceedings. Indeed, when NATO has a lapse in upholding Western ideals, principles and causes, especially those for which the Allies fought during World War II and the Holocaust, it is incumbent upon genuine friends of NATO to point it out sharp and clear. This latest episode also impacts the principle that citizens of Eastern NATO countries deserve the same standards of freedom of speech and democracy as all others. It is, moreover, incumbent on US embassies in the Baltics, particularly in Vilnius, to stop defaming (as “Russian lackeys”) those (including US citizens these embassies exist to represent!) who stand up to far-right Holocaust revisionism and work for human rights in the region.

NATO has issued a new film extolling the Baltic postwar “Forest Brothers” with no mention of the “problem” that many (or most) were recycled Hitlerist forces, that most of their targets for murder were civilians, and that most harbored Nazi views of racial purity and hatred of their nations’ minorities. The film’s official description misleadingly implies that these “Brothers” were generally or equally comprised of people from “both sides of the war” and includes no mention of the related 21st century issues of glorification of Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe (or the 1950s glee taken by the “Brothers” in the Holocaust). In Vilnius, a city official was just fired for daring to question whether the “Brothers” were right to murder those who worked in state collective farms. While “Forest Brother” relics are preserved as national shrines (courtesy of EU budgets), the last surviving anti-Nazi base of Jewish partisans who fled the Vilna Ghetto is being left to sink right into the earth.

More on the alarming changes in recent years in US State Department policy: section; page; via Yivo; the neocon movement; and the DC Holocaust Museum (USHMM); DH’s USA page and section. Related: The allegedly most corrupt federal agency in Washington is the taxpayer-funded “US Commission for the Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad” (USCPAHA) which has in recent years colluded with forces entangled in destruction of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. But in July 2017, twelve US congressmen defiantly wrote a powerful letter to the president of Lithuania.

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July 2017

Rights of Deceased People are also Human Rights!

Non-Jewish Lithuanian citizens are starting to take the lead in the campaign to save the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from plans to plonk a convention center in its center, where people would revel, cheer, drink at bars and flush toilets surrounded by thousands of Vilna Jews buried there from the 15th to the 19th centuries (a fate that would never befall a Christian cemetery in today’s EU). This poster, produced in July 2017 by Julius Norwilla, includes a quote from philosopher Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, and the visualization created by a young Vilnius artist.

See more on international opposition; a summary of the saga; views of a major scholar on the cemetery’s history; a recent short film; the international petition that is approaching 40,000 signatures; full translation of the new poster; English version of the poster. The new Yiddish version. DH section on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery.

CLICK HERE FOR ENGLISH VERSION OF THE POSTER

טאַפּט אָנעט אָטאָ דאָ אויפן יידישן נוסח

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June 2017

Josh Cohen in Reuters: Will President Trump Confront Ukraine’s Leaders on Naming of Streets for Holocaust Collaborators?

Cohen’s major op-ed is a response to the recent naming of yet another boulevard in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, for a Holocaust collaborator

UPDATE: WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS FINALLY SPEAKS OUT

“The common denominator here is state-sponsored inversion of history for the purposes of today’s ultra-nationalist, far-right politics: Glorify the Holocaust’s collaborators, defame the victims, survivors and heroes, and you’re heading for the bogus Double Genocide (with its attendant yearned-for obfuscation of the Holocaust)” — Dovid Katz

Ukrainian “OUN” Nationalists Target Citizens who Oppose Glorification of Nazi Collaborators

Moves follow Dolinsky’s “game changing” New York Times op-ed

See Discussion on DH’s Twitter

Also: Ukraine Opens Criminal Investigation into 94 Year Old Jewish World War II Army Hero

Major conceptual expansion of Lithuanian prosecutors’ decade-old campaign against Jewish partisan veterans and Holocaust survivors who speak out

UKRAINE SECTION DOUBLE GENOCIDE SECTION MORE FROM DOVID KATZ

State-sponsored and elite-endorsed messaging extols the “heroism” of actual World War II perpetrators and ethnic cleansers as well as increasingly overt “East-European style antisemitism”. But the campaign, masquerading as history, patriotism, political science, mainstream media, and even Holocaust studies, is enabled by the current geopolitical backdrop and a Western tendency to silently “give them all a pass”.

See: Josh Cohen in Foreign Policy (2 May 2016); Semen Doroshenko in (Ukrainian website) Politnavigator (26 Feb. 2017); Andreas Umland in New Eastern Europe (7 March 2017); Sam Sokol in the London Jewish Chronicle (9 March 2017); Report in JTA (27 March 2017); Eduard Dolinsky in the New York Times (11 April 2017).

Ukraine elites’ recent statements on matter of race and history: See former MP’s statement; opening of disturbing monument at Babi Yar.

Free speech in Ukraine? See Josh Cohen in Foreign Policy on laws criminalizing opposing points of view; DH’s section on similar laws & free-speech infractions throughout Eastern Europe; DH’s Ukraine section.

Fracas at Paris conference: Group of scholars asks Paris conference to exclude cheerleader for local Ukrainian collaborators; History News Network; JTA’s report; Jerusalem Post article by Per Anders Rudling and Efraim Zuroff.

Earlier: See Dovid Katz in Times of Israel, ConsortiumNews.com, Jewish Currents; DH’s media tracker for the 2014-2015 Maidan Revolution period.

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June 2017

Lithuanian National Library Opens New Center Named for Wartime Advocate of Ethnic Cleansing of Nation’s Jewish Minority. Andrius Kulikauskas’s Eyewitness Report.

Does the National Library’s inclusion and celebration of a center named for an “ethnic cleansing advocate” (during the Lithuanian Holocaust) derive “legitimacy” from its neighbor, the Judaic Studies Center opened less then one month ago to universal acclaim, on the same floor, by New York’s Yivo and the National Library’s leadership?

A Question for Yivo’s Board?

Yivo has won back a lot of credibility by now building Jewish studies in Lithuania in cooperation with the National Library and other academic institutions instead of the Red-Brown Commission and Holocaust revisionist agencies as in past years (see Yivo section, scroll to bottom to review chronologically; the 2015 letter from Vilna born Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg, 2012 participation in a conference set up to camouflage the concurrent reburial with full honors of the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister). Has the Holocaust revisionist establishment nevertheless found a way yet again to abuse the Yivo board’s good will and enlist the Yivo brand in attempts to kosherize “by juxtaposition” the glorification of Holocaust collaborators and cheerleaders? Hopefully Yivo’s leaders will this time speak out rapidly with moral clarity and ensure the new center does not remain under the same roof as its neighbor that exists to sanitize the Holocaust’s local supporters. What would Chaikel Lunski, Zelig-Hirsh Kalmanovitsh, Zalmen Reyzen, Tsemakh Shabad, and Max Weinreich have said?

May 2017

Trending in Defending

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A Vilnius Visualization Artist Offers Starting Point for Restoration of City’s Old Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės)

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Molėtai (Malát), town in northeastern Lithuania: Town church commissioning bas-relief of wartime priest who organized the shooting squad that murdered 100% of the town’s Jews? Paul Alster in The Times of Israel

When East European Governments Make Heroes out of Holocaust Collaborators; in Ukraine (+ Twitter); Vilnius Battle over two Major Collaborators

Bitter new campaign against Holocaust survivor and anti-Nazi resistance hero Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, who turns 95 on 22 May; Ronaldas Račinskas, director of state’s “red-brown” commission explains (in documentary film) why he thinks the state must investigate veterans of the anti-Nazi partisans (late head of the Jewish Community noted years ago that it only ever happens to Jewish partisans)

Jewish Life in Vilnius is Not Boring; Vilna Yiddish Reading Circle Starts new session on Wednesday 17 May 2017, 6 PM. All welcome!

Vilnius University goes for PR bonanza by offering historical “memory diplomas” for students prevented by war from finishing their degrees. But it quickly emerged that the exceptions to the “generous proposal” include Jewish students who survived because they heroically fought the Nazis either as Jewish partisans or in the Soviet army (allied during the Holocaust years with the United States and Great Britain). Details here. JTA report.◊

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April 2017

17 Organizations in Lithuania Sign Petition in Favor of Central Vilnius Street Name Glorifying Holocaust Promoter K. Škirpa

Among the 17 is Sąjūdis (Vilnius & Kaunas), whose honorary national chairman is Prof. V. Landsbergis, and whose national council includes MP Emanuelis Zingeris. Will Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius in his reply stand up for what’s right?

Background to the Vilnius street-naming debate. More street names. Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas documents Škirpa’s calls for the ethnic cleansing of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens during World War II.

NOREIKA, TOO

RELATED: Incredible and incredibly sad stance on the alleged Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika: Chief Adviser to the president of Lithuania replies (6 Feb. 2017, to a query from Grant Gochin) on Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika “explaining” why it’s okay for him to be a national hero — this, in a country where 96.4% percent of the Jewish minority was murdered. See Evaldas Balčiūnas’s introductory article on Noreika’s Holocaust role; his summary of the summer 2015 petition and debates; protest by the Lithuanian Union of Jewish Students; 2016 call by Jewish Community of Lithuania. Samples of public shrines for Noreika.

29 March London Jewish Chronicle article on glorification of both Skirpa and Noreika in Lithuania; Defending History page and section on regional worship of collaborators and perpetrators.

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March 2017

NEW SECTION: A DECADE OF STATE-SPONSORED DEFAMATION AND HARASSMENT OF LITHUANIA’S LAST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS; SUMMARY TRACKING PAGE HERE

Far Right in Lithuania (with Help from Gov. Agency!) Launches Spring 2017 Campaign Against 95 Year Old Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Lithuania’s Oldest Holocaust Survivor, and Hero of the Anti-Nazi Partisans

Defending History’s Call over the Years for a Gracious State Apology to All Five Defamed Holocaust Survivors

BUT STATE-SPONSORED “RED-BROWN” COMMISSION CONTINUES TO DEFAME SURVIVOR IN THE CONTEXT OF PROMOTING DOUBLE GENOCIDE REVISIONISM UNDER COVER OF “HOLOCAUST EDUCATION”

IN THE CONTEXT OF SEVEN PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

Fania Yocheles (later Brantsovsky / Brancovskaja), seated first row left, is the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. Now, soon to turn 95, she is again the target of an antisemitic campaign that included a latter day “Witch Trial” on Lithuania’s March 11th Independence Day. The state-sponsored Genocide Center has issued an incredible document effectively accusing her late husband of murder for his own role in the Allied partisans in the forests who fought the Nazis and are heroes of the free world.

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Campaign Featured at March 11th 2017 Independence Day “Witch Hunt” Protocol Declaimed for Cameras in Forecourt of President’s Palace; The far-right, pro-fascist state-financed “Genocide Center” (page; section) issued a new document on Brantsovsky that declares her not to have been “present” at Kaniūkai, but rather “just” at Jurkonys and Krūminiai, and to have married a “murderer” of Kaniūkai (her late husband), so the “Nationalist Union” rejects all that as far too weak. Is the whole discussion what it is that the “patriots” had to celebrate on their nation’s cherished Independence Day in the forecourt of the presidential palace? The late Leonidas Donskis on the campaign against Jewish partisan veterans: “Intoxicated with hatred against the vanishing Lithuanian Jews.” Is this how national patriots want to say farewell to the last 95 year old scions of the obliterated Litvak civilization after 700 years of coexistence in this land? Our own appeal to newly elected Pres. Grybauskaitė in May 2009.

Effort to Rewrite Holocaust History by Blaming the Victims in the Spirit of “Double Genocide” to Enter 12th Year Next Month; Early International Responses; Comment by Dr. Shimon Alperovich; US Congressmen Berman, Hodes, Wexler; US Congressmen Berkley, Berman, Hodes, Moran, Wexler; Former UK PM Gordon Brown; Milan Chersonski; Prof. Leonidas Donskis; Abraham Foxman (ADL); Sir Martin Gilbert; Edward Lucas in the Economist; Dovid Katz; UK MP Denis MacShane

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21 March 2017

Vilnius Author of Petition to Save Old Jewish Cemetery and Head of Kaunas Synagogue Deliver Petition (and its 39,000 Signatures) to Lithuanian Government. On Facebook.

Photo: DefendingHistory.com

The Story The Ethics International Opposition Paper Trail DH Section

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16 March 2017

Hundreds Take Part in Annual March 16th Waffen SS Love-Fest in Heart of Riga, Latvian Capital

EVENTS APPROVED BY RIGA CITY COUNCIL

Protest Outside Latvian Embassy in Berlin; Speeches by Volker Beck and Monica Lowenberg

Reports by JTA, World Jewish Congress, London Express

Baltic Times and BNS “coverage” mentions only Russian opposition to the marches, ignoring Jewish community, the Holocaust and the de facto celebration of genocidal racism; from the run-up

Monica Lowenberg’s blog documents government, church and elite society’s support for honoring the Waffen SS

PREVIOUS YEARS IN RIGA IN VILNIUS IN KAUNAS DH SECTION; ALSO: SECTIONS ON LATVIA & ARTICLES BY MONICA LOWENBERG, ALEKSANDRS FEIGMANIS, ALEKSANDRS KUZMIN

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March 2017

Can Small East European Jewish Communities Maintain their Independence in the Face of Government Interests?

Lithuanian Jewish Community Leadership Elections and Vilnius Jewish Life

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11 March 2017

Over 500 Neo-Nazis Granted Center of Vilnius for March 11th Independence Day Parade; Detour to President’s Palace for a Statement Smearing Vilna Ghetto Survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, 95

PREVIOUS YEARS IN VILNIUS IN KAUNAS IN RIGA DH SECTION

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16 February 2017

Defending History Monitors Kaunas Neo-Nazi March on Lithuania’s Feb. 16th Independence Day

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March-April 2017

38,000 Sign Petition to Save Lithuania’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery from Convention Center Project

Petition, launched by Vilnius’s Ruta Bloshtein, is thought to be largest Litvak endeavor since the Holocaust

February 2017 updates: London CPJCE, unmasked by Wikileaks for asking payments in connection with the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, now announces that the hated Soviet ruin on the cemetery’s premises is for Lithuanians the “Tower of London and the Statue of Liberty” (!); The “shameful” role of a U.S. federal agency that’s supposed to protect Jewish cemeteries abroad; Lithuanian ambassador in Washington now says his government is “reviewing the situation” (JTA); in The Times of Israel; Report on U.S. rabbis’ meeting with the ambassador (JP Updates); TheYeshivaWorld.com; Baltimore Jewish Life; Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Story The Ethics International Opposition Paper Trail DH Section

PROF. SHNAYER LEIMAN IN MATZAV; YAIR ROSENBERG IN TABLET; YANIV POHORYLES IN YNET; RABBI YONAH BOOKSTEIN IN THE JEWISH JOURNAL AND THE HUFFINGTON POST; IN IZRUS; DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER IN AISH.COM; RABBI PINI DUNNER IN ALGEMEINER.COM; LJC LAY LEADER’S RESPONSE (WEBSITE DOESN’T MENTION PETITION’S EXISTENCE)

RIVA POMERANTZ IN AMI-LIVING; SONIA ZHURAVLYOVA IN THE JEWISH CHRONICLE & DH’S REPLY TO RABBI HERSCHEL GLUCK; IN JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE; MEP ANTANAS GUOGA IN DELFI.LT / LITHUANIA TRIBUNE; BNS; PRANCIŠKUS VAIŠVILA IN DELFI.LT; TURTO BANKAS; RABBI S.J. FEFFER; 5 FEB DH UPDATE

by VULOVAK for DefendingHistory.com

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Lithuania’s senior rabbis, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky and Rabbi Kalev Krelin, were among the early signatories, followed by a statement by Rabbi S. J. Feffer. The previous chief rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein was publicly dismissed in 2015 for having accepted the unanimous view of top Lithuanian-tradition rabbis worldwide.

Lo Tishkach Jewish Cemeteries Initative gets off the fence and supports Bloshtein’s petition; But silence from the board of “Maceva” and moral (and issue) confusion from “Jewish Heritage Europe” … Latest price tag for the corruption-tinged project is 34 million euros.

WHEN GRAVE TRADERS BOAST THAT THE US STATE DEPT. IS “REPORTING TO SATMAR REBBA” …

The Satmar organization in Monroe, N.Y., affiliated to the London-based CPJCE, boasts that the State Department’s rep from the US taxpayer funded Commission for Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad (USCPAHA) is “reporting to Satmar Rebba” (meaning Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum; the competing contender for the throne, Rabbi Yekusiel Zalman Teitelbaum, by contrast, personally co-signed a rabbinic ban on defiling the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, joining the world’s Litvak rabbis). The CPJCE allegedly extracts large secretive payments for its permissions and supervisions, as per Wikileaks, reported in the Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, and Defending History.

CONTINUED PUBLIC SILENCE FROM THE US TAXPAYER FUNDED “COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD” (USCPAHA) WHICH HAS ALLEGED CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST TIES WITH LITHUANIAN GOV. ENTITIES AND THE “AARON” BRANCH OF SATMAR HASIDIM IMPLICATED IN THE VILNA CEMETERY SCANDAL. COLOR CODED KEY.

ALSO: See the petition to stop the diversion of government restitution funds deriving from the religious properties of the annihilated Jewish population to the whims of a tiny circle of elites and foreign ministries. Please allocate fairly for the survival and growth of Lithuania’s fragile Jewish community. Background in JTA and Defending History. Latest developments.

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1 January 2017

SURPRISE, SURPRISE…

Annual Bander a Birthday March in Center of Kiev, Ukraine’s Capital, Now Includes “JUDEN RAUS”

Will the West maintain its silence on Ukraine’s ongoing glorification of major Holocaust collaborators? What about Western values? Will media coverage again be limited to “Jewish” and “Russian” publications? Background from 2014. Last July, a Kiev street was officially renamed for Stepan Bandera.

Arutz Sheva Hamodia Jerusalem Post JTA

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1 January 2017

Defending History’s 2017 People of the Year

As 2017 gets underway, Defending History is proud to honor three Vilnius personalities, all from its Orthodox Jewish community this year, who have stood up for cherished principles against powerful forces. In all cases, the principles defended pertain not only to Jewish affairs but to human rights more generally. Their courage and determination can serve as an example to all who defend human rights and history, even when it is inconvenient and draws the ire of power-invested (often state-related) institutions. The three are Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Ms. Ruta Bloshtein, and Rabbi Kalev Krelin. More here. See from previous years the Prophet Amos Human Rights Awards and the 2014 Person of the Year.

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28 December 2016

Vilnius Chanukah in 2016

OUR COVERAGE; EARLIER REPORT; LAST YEAR

City of Vilnius TV3.lt Lrytas.lt 15min.lt Delfi.lt Wilnoteka.lt

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3 December 2016

PROF. DOV LEVIN

Kaunas (Kovno) 1925 — Jerusalem 2016

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His life. Author of The Litvaks, the Lithuania volume of Yad Vashem’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities (Pinkas Hakehillot), and numerous books and studies. In Defending History. Returning his award from the Lithuanian government in solidarity with Yitzhak Arad (2008). Protesting a “one-sided Holocaust conference” in Jerusalem (2009). Photo: speaking at Leivick House Tel Aviv event for Dr. Rachel Margolis (2009). Editor’s comment.

In 2000, Dov Levin’s Trumpa žydų istorija Lietuvoje (A Short History of the Jews of Lithuania) appeared in Vilnius in the translation of Jonas Morkus, published with the assistance of the Israeli Embassy in the Baltics (then in Riga). But today’s Israeli Embassy in Lithuania (in Vilnius) has yet to release a statement on the death of the last great historian of Lithuanian Jewry of the Holocaust survivor generation. Levin was a citizen of Israel from the day of its establishment. He was a veteran of both the Jewish partisans in the forests of Lithuania and the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. After the war, he lived all his life in Jerusalem where he was professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Related: section on Israel related issues.

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December 2016

“The Photograph”: A Memoir by Lithuanian Teacher Motiejus Martišius

Simon Malkes Perpetuates the Memory of German Rescuer Karl Plagge

**Lev Golinkin in The Nation on Dangers from Ukraine’s Far Right**

**Dovid Katz in ISGAP on “Antisemitism in the 21st Century Shtetl”**

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December 2016

End-of-Year Honesty-of-History and Antisemitism Issues Await Public Word from Mayor of Vilnius:

(1) Will he issue a public statement responding to Jewish community chair Faina Kukliansky’s Nov. 11th letter on plaque glorifying Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika? One year ago, Vilnius Jewish students protested. There is also a Noreika inscription on capital’s central boulevard. Evaldas Balčiūnas’s 2012 article. Balčiūnas section.

(2) Will the mayor support City Councillor Mark Harold’s proposal to rename for inspirationally brave Lithuanian rescuers the Vilnius street currently named for Nazi collaborator Kazys Škirpa? Live report on the 29 Nov. “surreal” debate in the capital’s Old Town Hall. Jewish Community Chair Faina Kukliansky also weighed in with a strong letter concerning the city’s continued honoring of Škirpa with a street name. In September she spoke out about three major collaborators who are still widely glorified by street names and plaques.

(3) Will he speak out on convention center project in heart of city’s old Jewish cemetery (the plan has attracted international opposition)? Recent appeals to him on both shrines for collaborators and planned convention center in heart of old Vilna Jewish cemetery.

Mayor’s colorful record on Jewish issues

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ON OUR PAGES 5 YEARS AGO

29 November 2016

In Vilnius, City Council Holds “Surreal” Public Debate on 29 Nov. on Street Name Honoring a Nazi Collaborator; But Will the Mayor (Who Did Not Attend) Ever Speak Out with Moral Clarity?

ŠKIRPA IS IN THE MIDDLE

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Reports on Vilnius Jewish Public Library panel & views of Marius Ivaškevičius, Tomas Kajokas, Rūta Vanagaitė, Jurgita Verbickienė, Irena Veisaitė, Efraim Zuroff and others: Library’s Facebook page; Lzinios.lt. Comments to Lzinios.lt article refer to Jewish partisans who have still not received an apology for defamation from state agencies, resulting in ongoing abuse for Holocaust Obfuscation in de facto public discourse (as well as permanent historical defamation). Announced panel included no member of Lithuania’s living Jewish community. Also: Vanagaitė exposes a Vilnius-region Holocaust mass grave now for sale. In 15min.lt

Dovid Katz on “Antisemitism in the 21st Century Shtetl” (in ISGAP Flashpoint)

and on: Double Genocide Revisionism in Museums (in Dapim)

Updates on the 2016 “Vilnius Locked-Up Synagogue Saga”; Rabbi Krinsky’s New Blog

BERLIN: CLEMENS HENI ON HOLOCAUST NEGATIONISM AND THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS (in THE TIMES OF ISRAEL)

JERUSALEM: CNAAN LIPHSHIZ ON UKRAINIAN JEWRY’S RESPONSE TO GOV. WORSHIP OF HOLOCAUST COLLABORATOR STEPAN BANDERA (in JTA)

NEW YORK: VANAGAITE AND ZUROFF IN JOINT APPEARANCE IN TEANECK, NJ; VANAGAITE IS 2016 WINNER OF THE L.A. SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER’S COVETED “WOMAN OF VALOR” AWARD; BACKGROUND

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READERS IN THE VILNIUS AREA

VILNA YIDDISH LITERARY CIRCLE TO READ FROM CHAIM GRADE (1910-1982)

EVERYONE WELCOME! Next Session Wednesday 30 November 2016, 6 PM at the Jewish Cultural and Information Center, Mėsinių Street 3 in the Old Town. Always with a sharp lens for Lithuanian Yiddish language and culture.

INFORMATION IN YIDDISH INFORMATION IN LITHUANIAN & ENGLISH

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Opinions on History: Now by Diktat of Right-Wing Nationalist Governments at NATO’s Eastern Flank? Where are the Free Speech Monitors at OSCE, NATO, EU, UNESCO, etc?

Parliaments of Poland and Ukraine pass Law stating that World War II a result (solely?) of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; Reaction of Vladimir Golstein; Coincidental discovery of documents leading to different conclusions published by the right-of-center Telegraph in London. More on recent developments in Poland and Ukraine.

Holocaust Obfuscation (and deflection of blame from the actual perpetrators) not far from the surface? Law follows years of criminalization of dissent to aspects of Double Genocide, maxing out at two years of imprisonment in Lithuania, three in Hungary, five in Latvia, and ten in Ukraine. The explanation for such laws…

THE LATE LEONIDAS DONSKIS (1962—2016) ON CRIMINALIZATION OF DEBATE AND HIS ESSAYS ON RELATED TOPICS

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NEWS AND VIEWS

Andreas Umland in Foreign Policy on Ukraine’s Glorification of Nazi Collaborators; Sam Sokol in JNS.org on Ukrainian Jewish Leader who Dared to Challenge his Government’s Glorification of Collaborators; in ISGAP’s Flashpoint on Butchering History in Ukraine

Did Double Genocide Just Make it to The O’Reilly Factor?

Seth J. Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post on Holocaust Dilution

Dovid Katz in Jewish Currents: “Putin” as Excuse for Hitler-Glorification

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Piece by Piece, the Holocaust is Being Downgraded in Europe by East European Manipulation of European Union Institutions

“European Shoah Legacy Institute” Legitimizes Double Genocide Politics of “Prague Platform” by Joining in Organizing Competition for Designs for a Mix-and-Match Red-Brown Monument in Brussels

Prague Platform Continues to Support the 2008 Prague Declaration, the primary document of 21st century East European nationalist driven Holocaust revisionism. See the Europarliamentary response: The Seventy Years Declaration (in 15 languages).

EARLIER REPORT (WHEN COMPETITION WAS ANNOUNCED). Winners and celebration banquet now seem to be flaunted on website of Prague Platform but suppressed on the website of the “Shoah Legacy Institute” . . .

The “Shoah Legacy Institute” is located in Prague. All of the winners of the “Pan European” [!] Competition are from the Czech and Slovak Republics.

SEE DEFENDING HISTORY SECTIONS ON THE PRAGUE DECLARATION, THE PRAGUE “PLATFORM” AND THE DOUBLE GENOCIDE MOVEMENT.

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Meanwhile, the Prague Platform’s mix-and-match revisionist exhibition on Nazi and Soviet crimes was on display in Canada in Aug. and Sept. 2016, as usual “under the radar” of criticism and scrutiny.

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LATEST ON THE NATIONAL CONGRESS CENTER PLANNED FOR HEART OF THE OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY

Vulovak / DefendingHistory.com

(1) Rabbi Tzvi Rotberg, head of major Litvak yeshiva in Israel, issues statement condemning Congress Center plans for the old Jewish cemetery, adding new voice to the international opposition.

(2) Rimvydas Valatka blasts massive corruption in “renovation” of old Soviet Sports Palace; Calls for building National Congress Center elsewhere (without mentioning the Old Jewish Cemetery there or International Opposition). Editor-in-chief of Lrytas.lt, he is a signatory of Lithuania’s 1990 Declaration of Independence.

(3) New wave of publicity on Jewish gravestones found all over Vilnius (following mayor’s “Yiddish sign” campaign), a diversion when accompanied by utter failure to condemn (or even mention) plans for new National Congress Center on top of thousands of Jewish graves where thousands will clap, cheer and urinate over remains of Vilnius citizens buried there for over half a millennium.

(4) Lithuanian Foreign Ministry source tells DH that “our Israeli ambassador” [i.e. in Vilnius] helped organize Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged Nov. 2015 blessing for desecration of the cemetery where his own ancestors lie buried. More background to the tale of power, antisemitism (Christian cemeteries don’t get this treatment), greed, photo-op glory, and collusion against the moral force of the thousands of graves honorably purchased over 500 years by Jewish citizens of Vilnius. Israeli embassy invited to clarify its involvement (if any), and above all, to clarify PM Netanyahu’s position. See Israel issues.

GOOD WILL SOLUTION:

Preserve the old Jewish cemetery as a cemetery cum memorial park to which pilfered Jewish gravestones from all over town can be brought to stand in dignity. See essays by Julius Norwilla and Sid Leiman. Move the congress center project to a venue where it will be a pride to all the peoples of Lithuania and Europe.

Last year, a group of the world’s greatest Litvak rabbis came to beg the Vilnius mayor (and other officials) to move the Congress Center project. They still have no answer… The mayor’s colorful record on Jewish affairs.

In late August 2015, world’s leading Litvak rabbis came to beg the mayor of Vilnius to oppose placing the new National Congress Center atop thousands of Vilnius citizens’ graves in the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Pitramónt.

See the essays by Ruta Bloshtein, Chaim Burshtein [it got him fired], Milan Chersonski, Pinchos Fridberg, Bernard Fryshman, Dovid Katz, Andrius Kulikauskas, Sid Leiman, Michael Maass and dozens of others.

International Opposition. Paper Trail. Defending History Section.

Utter silence from organizations devoted specifically to preservation of Jewish cemeteries, including the donor funded NGO “Maceva” and the United States taxpayer funded “Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad” (USCPAHA) which has been deeply implicated in the machinations of the Satmar rabbis who bless the “Vilnius convention center on the cemetery”… See section on the USCPAHA and the London-based CPJCE. The cave-in by Asra Kadisha. The London CPJCE rabbis who “provide permissions” in effect for $$$ were exposed by Wikileaks, Jerusalem Post, JTA, and DH.

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The “Other” Vilnius Question That Won’t Go Away:

Will the mayor (and president and prime minister) speak out on city’s street names and plaques that honor Holocaust collaborators? City streets and plaques glorify Škirpa, Noreika and the LAF’s “June insurrection”…

Škirpa is in the middle

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DEFENDING HISTORY WAS THERE

Annual Sept. 23 Official Commemoration Ceremony at the Ponár (Paneriai) Mass Murder Site Outside Vilnius, Lithuania

Dramatic Shift: Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Faina Kukliansky Calls for Removal of Street Names and Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators, Boldly Citing Juozas Krikštaponis, Jonas Noreika, and Kazys Škirpa; Sharp Contrast with Last Year’s Failed Event

Official Jewish community’s lay leader, Faina Kukliansky, standing in front of key government officials, valiantly challenged the sincerity of Holocaust commemoration when there are streets and squares named for major Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators. One participant said: “Her courageous remarks and invoking of specific names made for the moral highlight of the day.”

The Defending History Community Mourns our Colleague

LEONIDAS DONSKIS

13 August 1962 — 21 September 2016

**HIS WORK IN DEFENDING HISTORY INCLUDES ESSAYS ON:**

♦ Inflation of the word “genocide” and criminalization of debate

♦ The campaign against Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi Soviet partisans and its implications

♦ Response to proposals to “reevaluate” the Hitlerist LAF and Provisional Government collaborators of 1941

♦ Reponse to the newest incarnations of Holocaust Denial

♦ Response to the reburial with full honors of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister; Public letter on effects of the reburial and the participation of Vytautas Magnus University

♦ Reply to domestic critics of European Parliament’s criticism of homophobic legislation

DEFENDING HISTORY COVERAGE OF PROFESSOR DONSKIS INCLUDES

♦ Election to the European Parliament

♦ Aftermath of his dramatic statements about the 2012 Brazaitis reburial; more coverage

♦ Standing up for the European Parliament’s criticism of his country’s policies on LGBT rights

♦ Nida Vasiliauskaitė on Donskis’ reply to Girnius over attempts to rehabilitate the 1941 LAF and the Provisional Government

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Malát (Molėtai):

Julius Norwilla’s take on the recent major event on 29 August 2016 marking the 75th anniversary of the massacre of the town’s 2,000 Jewish inhabitants (not one was rescued).

Speeches at the event by Tsvi-Hirsh Kritzer (the project’s initiator) and Leon Kaplan.

Selection of international media coverage, opinion and debates.

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Poland:

Don Snyder in the Forward (NY) exposes the new threat to freedom of speech and research on Holocaust history in Poland. See more on recent developments in Poland; Poland section.

But Western media has largely ignored the deterioration of free speech on Holocaust issues in much of Eastern Europe. See Free Speech section; the long saga of police and prosecutorial harassment of Evaldas Balčiūnas in Lithuania; and the introduction of “Double Genocide” laws criminalizing, in effect, the Western narrative of World War II, with punishments of up to 2 years imprisonment in Lithuania (2010), 3 years in Hungary (2010), 5 years in Latvia (2014), 10 years in Ukraine (2015); but no specific prison sentences mentioned in Estonia’s “Valentine’s Day Law” (2012) …

In some cases, neocon politics preclude even mild critiques of policies of NATO allies in Eastern Europe. In others, there are also budgets for providing honors to presumably useful foreigners from the West who cover for disturbing policies and sometimes become entangled in campaigns in efforts against local scholars, activists, and journalists who dare dissent. For geopolitical reasons, there are occasionally issues concerning the US State Department (more here; US section; page), the British Foreign Office (see also Monica Lowenberg section, DH section); the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and others. Israel (and its embassy in Vilnius) continue to fail to ask for state apologies for the three Israeli citizens defamed for posterity.

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Dozens of Scholars of Polish Jewish History Sign a Bold and Historic Open Letter on Polish Government’s Distortions of History on Jedwabne and Kielce

Suspense rising on ultimate decision of master Brandeis scholar Antony Polonsky, who some think may have been manipulated by Lithuanian state honors in that country’s Holocaust politics. Some of those who signed the bold and forthright document re Poland have themselves sung a different tune on the Baltics after subsidies from Lithuanian gov. agencies

Will there finally be discussion on why so many Western and Israeli scholars don’t speak up on vastly more state-sponsored Holocaust obfuscation, history fixing, and actual glorification of collaborators in the Baltics and Ukraine? Do free speech and frank discussion end at Poland’s eastern borders?

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Latvia:

A. Feigmanis on high government officials who think adulation of the Waffen SS is good for the country (and Jewish organizations that won’t speak up); A. Kuzmin asks whether the EU, OSCE and Council of Europe will comment on Latvia’s still-unrepealed “1998 Declaration” on the Waffen SS. See DH’s Latvia section.

Milan Chersonski Turns 79 (2 Sept): Happy Birthday! Milan’s section in DH. Tribute to his dozen years (1999-2011) of editing Jerusalem of Lithuania.

Defending History Turns 7 (6 Sept)

From our first issue. Five Years Ago. Three Years Ago. The Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) of 2012 (& on its own website).

David Hirsch in Engage and Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha, Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, Mark Ames in The Nation, and Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger and Peter Jukes in Motley Moose (2011); Danny Ben-Moshe in his film Rewriting History (2012); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Richard Bloom in his film Defending Holocaust History (2014); Daniel Brook in Slate (2015); Larry Yudelson in the Jewish Standard (2016)

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Autumn 2016 Discourse over “Historic Soul” of Central Vilnius

Will Vilnius Mayor & Lithuania’s PM & President Issue Morally Clear Statements on Two Sites Visible from Grand Dukes’ Medieval Hill?

THERE ARE FIVE JEWISH FORMS OF THE FABLED CITY’S NAME: ווילנא, ווילנע, ווילנה, וילנה, ווילניוס

(1) Changing the name of a city center street that glorifies a Nazi collaborator who enthusiastically supported the removal of his country’s Jewish citizens?

FOR MORE BACKGROUND ON KAZYS ŠKIRPA (CENTER) SEE DH ARTICLES BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS, AND MILAN CHERSONSKI. PROF. T. SNYDER’S BLOODLANDS: “Škirpa used this suffering in his radio broadcasts to spur mobs to murder. Some 2,500 Jews […]” … (p. 192)

RECENT PROTESTS INCLUDE: MARK HAROLD (SPLINTER) OF VILNIUS CITY COUNCIL; SERGEY KANOVICH IN THE LITHUANIA TRIBUNE

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One of the Škirpa signs is right on the Museum of Applied Arts building. But is this what the museum wants to be known for? Could its directors join efforts to replace the name with one that brings pride and inclusiveness to modern Vilnius?

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(2) Will elected officials speak out in favor of moving the new National Congress Center project away from the old Jewish cemetery where thousands of Vilnius citizens were buried from the 15th to the 19th century?

Vulovak for DefendingHistory.com

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Will organizations that exist to protect Jewish cemeteries speak out now, howsoever mildly, as “bulldozer time” comes upon us? The US taxpayer funded USCPAHA? The privately funded Maceva? Asra Kadisha? Lo Tishkach? HFPJC? The London CPJCE rabbis allegedly caught red-handed on Wikileaks?

FATE OF THE BALTICS’ LAST UNDERGROUND JEWISH PARTISAN BASE

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FROM THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA:

24 JULY 2016 JTA REPORT BY CNAAN LIPSHIZ ON KAUNAS KILLING SITE USED NOW TO CELEBRATE WEDDINGS; 26 JULY REACTION FROM THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF LITHUANIA; 26 JULY REPORT IN TRANSITIONS ON LINE; 5 AUG. REPLY FROM KAUNAS MUNICIPALITY; 9 AUG. JTA REACTION.

20 JULY 2016 TABLET REPORT BY JARED MCBRIDE ON THE GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS IN UKRAINE

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22 July 2016 Defending History Eyewitness Report

VERDICT IN: EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS NOT GUILTY (AFTER 4 YEARS OF HARASSMENT AND A DOZEN 450 KM ROUND TRIPS FROM HOME — BUT COURT ALLOWS FAR RIGHT “PLAINTIFF” 20 DAYS TO APPEAL)

After years of legal harassment, Evaldas Balčiūnas is found “not guilty” of — telling the truth. He has protested his country’s government continuing to use state funds to honor Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators. Photo: Julius Norwilla for DH.

Vilnius DH team came 0ut to support Evaldas Balčiūnas, on Friday, 22 July 2016 at Vilnius County Court.

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Related: Glorification of collaborators in Eastern Europe; public shrines in Lithuania; Evaldas Balčiūnas in DH

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22 July 2016

Can Summertime Yiddish be a Prop For Dangerous Holocaust Revisionism?

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14 July 2016

Vilnius City Council “Defers” Decision on Renaming City Center Street Named for Hitler Collaborator

i24 report. Background in DH on British-born city council member, Mark Harold Splinter, who proposed the change (his statement in English). Samples from elsewhere in Lithuania. Wider issue in Eastern Europe. Within “Double Genocide” theory.

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15 July 2016

Architects Publish Three Visualizations for National Convention Center Planned for Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Where Thousands Still Lie Buried

But critics warn that property magnates, politicians, and their foreign Jewish shmendriks will be haunted for generations by a rather different visualization…

Vulovak / DefendingHistory.com

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A few of the luminous Jewish scholars buried on site are enumerated by Professor Sid Leiman; Professor Leiman’s essay on the current convention center project; the mounting international opposition.

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Meanwhile, Prof. Bernard Fryshman, Inspirer of US Congress Law Protecting Minorities’ Cemeteries, Critiques Pliant London Rabbis and US Gov’s “Commission to Protect American Heritage Abroad” on Failure to Oppose Planned Convention Center in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

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See Latest Coverage. Prof. Fryshman’s Article. Paper Trail.

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JULY 2016: Vilnius-based Rabbi Samuel Jacob Feffer pleads with Lithuanian political icons Emanuelis Zingeris (left) and Vytautas Landsbergis, both signatories of the the nation’s declaration of independence, to come out against the deeply hurtful “national convention center in the old Vilna Jewish cemetery” project. PHOTO: JULIUS NORWILLA.

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Vilnius mayor’s PR machine tries to cover “the Jewish cemetery affair” with photo-ops on removal of the small Soviet-era electric power station made of Jewish gravestones, after his “Yiddish offensive” of “ludicrous” multilingual signs — all in the absence, to this day, of a word of polite public reply to the great Litvak rabbis who came to beg him to stand up against the project for a national convention center where thousands will cheer, sing and use toilets over a half millennium of Vilna Jewish graves. Does he really want that to be his defining image for history? Does he care about what the convention center project is doing to his city’s reputation? “The ghosts who will haunt his honor the mayor are not those from the electro-power station.”

THOSE AROUND THE WORLD WHO HAVE SPOKEN OUT

**Will organizations that exist to protect Jewish cemeteries speak out now, howsoever mildly, as “bulldozer time” comes upon us? Maceva? Asra Kadisha? Lo Tishkach? USCPAHA [/inDH]? HFPJC? CPJCE [/in DH]? EU?**

RELATED: AND WHICH ORGANIZATIONS ARE SPEAKING OUT FOR PRESERVATION OF THE BALTICS’ LAST UNDERGROUND JEWISH PARTISAN BASE?

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VISITORS TO VILNIUS, LITHUANIA:

NEXT YIDDISH READING CIRCLE: MONDAY EVENING 25 JULY 2016 AT 6 PM AT THE JEWISH CULTURAL CENTER, MESINIU STREET 3, OLD TOWN. ALL WELCOME.

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11 July 2016

Kaunas Court Affirms Sentence of Two Years “Restricted Freedom” for “Facilitation of Genocide” by Former KGB Officer for Arresting Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas in 1956

SEE OBZOR REPORT THAT CITES BNS; REPORTS CONFIRMED BY LITHUANIAN COURT OF APPEAL AND TIESOS.LT; HOLOCAUST ASPECTS REPORTED BY ISRAELI RUSSIAN LANGUAGE NEWS PORTAL IZRUS

Ramanauskas-Vanagas was an Alleged Nazi Collaborator Implicated in Holocaust Crimes

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July 2016

Western Mainstream Media Fails to Mention that East European Allies of the West are Investing in Glorification of Hitler’s Local Collaborators

Huffington Post Piece on Stepan Bandera Worship in Ukraine Omits his Orgnaization’s Responsibility for Hundreds of Thousands of Murders of Poles and Jews; Major New Historical Book on Bandera Still Goes Unmentioned

Even Prodigious Newsweek Story on Vanagaite-Zuroff Book Omits the Issue of State Glorification (Street Names, Plaques, Memorials) for Nazi Collaborators; Article Gives Red-Brown Commission PR Cover; No Mention of Prague Declaration or the State Campaign against Holocaust Survivors who Resisted

The Conceptual War over History at the Core of Current Discourse in “Battle of the Declarations”: 2008 Prague Declaration that put “Double Genocide” on the Map and the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration that Punctured its PR Tank

SEE MORE ON: DOUBLE GENOCIDE, THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION, GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS AND THE PARALLEL CAMPAIGN AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS WHO RESISTED

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LATE JUNE / EARLY JULY 2016

Defending History Brings Results

Five years ago in 2011, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust on 23 June 1941 and the following days — nationalist murderers killed thousands of Jewish neighbors before the first German forces arrived or assumed control — the state sponsored an array of activities honoring the “rebels” (an historic nonsense, the Soviet occupying forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion, the largest in human history, not the local Jew-killers). That sham was followed a year later by the reburial with full honors of the Nazi puppet prime minister. This year, celebrations have been limited to fringe ultranationalist groups with the government maintaining its distance (there was a regrettable parliamentary document last Nov. proposed by some right-wing MPs, but it was largely ignored). Congratulations to Lithuania’s leaders on this progress toward historic truth during this week’s 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust that left 96.4% of its Jewish residents dead. See our proposed seven solutions to the issues remaining.

The Defending History Community’s Unrelenting Campaign Against Glorification of East European Holocaust Collaborators

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SUMMER 2016

Vilnius’s “British City Council member” calls for removal of city’s shrines for Nazi collaborators; Philosopher Andrius Kulikauskas writes an open letter to Archbishop on Jewish issues

♦

Will anyone stand up to the London-based CPJCE (“Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe”) that allegedly earns $$$ from the desecration of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery? See: Opposition to date; Paper trail; DH section; CPJCE section; Attempts to ensnare the young new rabbi in Vilnius? GeoBaltic’s latest survey including 1944 aerial photos. Latest: Discoveries of major 1935 rabbinic documents from Vilna and from Tel Aviv

♦

Josh Cohen in Foreign Policy on Ukraine’s project to “fix” Holocaust history; Former president of Ukrainian World Congress attacks the author personally, while accusing “the Jews” in the Ukraine famine of 1932-1933; more; New paper on genocidal nationalism; older Ukraine page

Respectfully disagreeing with a Yale professor on East European style Holocaust revisionism

♦

Two startling, brave new books by descendants of Holocaust perpetrators:

Linas Vildžiūnas reviews Rūta Vanagaitė’s new book on the Lithuanian Holocaust (written with Efraim Zuroff); Vanagaitė responds to establishment’s far-right barrage; Dramatic Lithuanian debate. Barbara Sofer in the Jerusalem Post; Cnaan Liphshiz in JTA; Paul Alster in Jerusalem Report; More in English

and

J.P. O’Malley in Times of Israel on Rita Gabis’s new book; Reviews in the New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews; New York Journal of Books; more. Author interviewed on CSPAN and NY Times Closeup series (timecode 25:28)

♦

Efraim Zuroff in the Jerusalem Post on glorification of collaborators in Croatia and beyond; More in OLC

♦

Dovid Katz in Novaya Gazeta (Baltics) on the campaign in Eastern Europe to revise history; in GIA; ToI; J-CUR; CN; AJ; JRB; TAB; Guardian; IT; JC; DH; More

♦

Lithuania’s chief neo-Nazi blogger, “Zeppelinus” (said to be a high official in the Economy Ministry) now asks gov. to expel Defending History editor in retaliation for (!) Israel’s expulsion of a Lithuanian citizen; Zeppo has long public record of racism, misogyny, antisemitism and homophobia, and long disapproves of DH’s editor…

♦

Dr. Craig Wight’s (University of Plymouth) critique of museums that deal with “genocide” in Lithuania (from a philosopher’s standpoint); Our editor’s (rather less philosophical) summary (timecodes 1:48, 6:23). . .

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4 June 2016

Vilnius Mass Grave Features Swastika and “Juden Raus” that are “Discreetly Engraved” at the Top

At the site, Naujaneriai, 1,767 Lithuanian Jewish citizens were murdered by Special Squad, local police & white-armbander “partisans” on 24 Sept. 1941

Discovery by Julius Norwilla indicates it’s from before cement was dry…

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29 May 2016

“Double Genociders” Export Far Right’s Holocaust Revisionism Westward

“Prague Platform” along with Slovak government boast cover of the “European Shoah Legacy Institute” (!) in announcing:

EU Competition (for Students Aged 16-21) for a New Red-Brown, Mix-n-Match Jumble Memorial in Brussels

See: Dovid Katz in Global International Analytics (GIA)

Will the red-equals-brown street-shows of Eastern Europe now be exported to Brussels under cover of a “Jewish” organization dedicated to Holocaust justice?

“Guidelines” include the requirement that “the memorial must be inclusive of the victims of National Socialism, Fascism and Communism”

“BATTLE OF THE DECLARATIONS”: PRAGUE DECLARATION (2008) vs. SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION (2012) [in 15 European languages]

LONG RECORD OF USE OF JEWISH, YIDDISH, OR HOLOCAUST PROJECTS AS A KIND OF PR COVER FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM

by Irina Izhogina

ALSO: EU funded “Prague Platform” exhibit that spews Double Genocide revisionism of the Holocaust arrives in Budapest; More on the “Platform” and the exhibit that circles the globe (courtesy of EU taxpayers) to underpin Eastern European far-right revisionism; Still, Platform’s director insists that nobody is erecting monuments for Nazi collaborators — Unaware of news from Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine? More…

Background: The “Prague Declaration” and the Double Genocide movement…

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3 May 2016

Colleagues in Paris and Vilnius

Event in Paris on the Lithuanian Holocaust on Tuesday 3 May at 5 PM at 9 rue Mahler (Room 107). Organized by Yahad-in-Unum with unspecified Lithuanian partners and including a video link with a team in Lithuania…

QUESTIONS: The questions that people are asking in the absence of a detailed public program on thbe organization’s website: Is Yahad-in-Unum co-organizing the event with any of the many bold Lithuanian intellectuals who have given so very much to the cause of simple Holocaust truth-telling, or will it be abused for revisionist PR in the hands of the “Red-Brown Commission” and the “Genocide Center”? Have the organizers invited (for example) Chaim Bargman, Saulius Beržinis, Dr. Valentinas Brandišauskas, Milan Chersonski, Professor Pinchos Fridberg, Rachel Kostanian, Andrius Kulikauskas, Professor L. Truska, Rūta Vanagaitė?

SEE NEW SECTION ON FRANCE

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22 April 2016

Réyze Levit (Roza Levitaitė)

1939—2016

Proud member of Lithuania’s Jewish community who boldly stood up to tell the truth about history revisionism and the rise of ever more Jewless “PR Jewish institutions”… Her 2014 interview with us.

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15 April 2016

Kaunas native (Holocaust Survivor in NY) records eyewitness account of unspeakable barbarism of 17, 18, & 19 year old “LAF white-armbander freedom fighters” in late June 1941. But state-sponsored museums, street names and events continue to glorify the Holocaust perpetrators in an elaborate double game (that is often underpinned/camouflaged by the exploitation of gullible Westerners).

Aftermath of the Baltic Neo-Nazi Marching Season:

EFRAIM ZUROFF IN THE JERUSALEM POST CALLS ON LATVIA TO CONFRONT ITS PAST

MONICA LOWENBERG IN HOPE NOT HATE CALLS ON BRITAIN’S FOREIGN MINISTRY TO STOP COVERING FOR EAST EUROPEAN GLORIFICATION OF NAZISM; RESPONSE OF UK’S MINISTER FOR EUROPE, AND OF THE LATVIAN AMBASSADOR IN LONDON

DOVID KATZ IN GLOBAL INDEPENDENT ANALYTICS ANALYZES THE WEST’S WALL OF SILENCE [translated into French]; FOLLOW-UP AT ISGAP

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11 March 2016

Defending History Monitors 9th Annual Neo-Nazi March in Central Vilnius on Nation’s 11th March Independence Day

Fascist and White Power Symbols, Placards Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators, and Antisemitic Caricatures are Flaunted on Route from Central Cathedral to House of Parliament

STILL NO COMMENT FROM MAYOR’S OFFICE? FROM ISRAELI EMBASSY? MEANWHILE ISRAELI AMBASSADOR IN PHOTO-OP GUSH FEST WITH KAUNAS OFFICIALS, BUT NO PUBLIC COMMENT ON THE EARLIER 16 FEBRUARY 2016 EVENT IN KAUNAS THAT GLORIFIED FIVE HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS IN THE CITY CENTER. KOVNO SURVIVOR QUOTED FROM GENESIS 4: 10 —

קוֹל דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ צֹעֲקִים אֵלַי מִן הָאֲדָמָה

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IMAGES FROM VILNIUS ON MARCH 11th:

PHOTO: EVALDAS BALCIUNAS FOR DH

PHOTO: VILMA FIOKLA KIURE FOR DH

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Eyewitness Reports by

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė and Evaldas Balčiūnas

Defending History Monitors the Marches:

Kaunas, Vilnius & Riga

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March 2016

Pro-Nazi Marches in Kaunas, Vilnius & Riga:

Will Western and Israeli Embassies & International Orgs Condemn Ongoing Granting of the Centers of Capital Cities for Admirers of Hitler’s “Accomplishment” in the Region?

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RIGA:

RUN UP TO MARCH 16 WAFFEN SS CITY CENTER FEST IN RIGA:

UK MP GARETH THOMAS WRITES TO LATVIAN AMBASSADOR AND TO BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE

MONICA LOWENBERG: BLOGSPOT, INTERNATIONAL PETITION & IN DH; SAM SOKOL IN THE JERUSALEM POST

MEANWHILE, RULING PARTY LATVIAN MP TELLS MEDIA THAT “CLEVER JEWS” ARE “UNDERMINING HIS NATION’S SECURITY”

PARLIAMENTARIANS WERE SLATED FOR THIS YEAR’S WAFFEN SS FEST ON MARCH 16TH IN THE LATVIAN CAPITAL; BUT LAST MINUTE CLIMBDOWN BY NATIONAL ALLIANCE REVERSES DECISION

DEFENDING HISTORY’S COVERAGE OF THE EVENT FROM 2010

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VILNIUS:

NEO-NAZI MARCH ON INDEPENDENCE DAY, MARCH 11TH, FROM CATHEDRAL SQUARE UP CITY’S MAIN BOULEVARD TO THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT

DEFENDING HISTORY’S COVERAGE OF THE EVENT FROM 2008; JEWISH COMMUNITY CHAIRPERSON SPOKE OUT

Will the popular new young and dashing mayor speak out? Will he ever find them another day and place (not the city center on independence day!) and defend the international dignity of Vilnius? Defending History has followed his colorful record on Jewish issues.

WILL THE CITY OF GEDIMINAS BE DEFILED EACH YEAR AS ITS 700TH YEAR APPROACHES?

**DOVID KATZ IN GLOBAL INDEPENDENT ANALYTICS (GIA)**

RESPONSE OF NATION’S TOP NEO-NAZI BLOGGER “ZEPPELINUS” (WHO IS ALLEGED TO BE A HIGH OFFICIAL AT THE MINISTRY OF THE ECONOMY) PHOTO MONTAGE OF HIS “WORKS”

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3 March 2016

Vilnius Prosecutors Who Have Publicly Named “Investigated Holocaust Survivors” for a Decade, Now Fail to Release The List of Alleged Local Holocaust Perpetrators

TOPSY-TURVY WORLD?

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28 February 2016

Sam Sokol in the Jerusalem Post on Plan to Name Yet Another Lithuanian Street for a Holocaust Perpetrator

**Report in Delfi.lt (LZB English version). Statement of Jewish Community chairperson.**

Travesty planned for the town Malát (Molėtai), in eastern Lithuania. Jewish descendants from abroad planning a major memorial event in August 2016. A checkered recent history of on-site ceremonies: Occasionally, town authorities seek foreign Jewish investment/PR while continuing to glorify collaborators (and actual murderers) and failing to plaque even mention of the actual local Jewish history (and genocide) in town centers (while “letting the foreign Jews do what they like out in the forest at the mass grave sites”).

Street Names & Plaques Honoring Holocaust Collaborators Around the Country

More “Dark Tourism” Sites

The Underlying Issue: Glorification of Collaborators; International Petition Underway at Change.org

Does the Central Government Lead by Example? The State’s 2012 Reburial of Hitler’s 1941 Puppet Prime Minister in Kaunas

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17 February 2016

EXCLUSIVE: Sound Track of the Efraim Zuroff — Rūta Vanagaitė Book Presentation in Vilnius (Dr. Zuroff’s comments are in English)

VAST MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE NEW BOOK

PHOTO OF 17 FEB. 2016 BOOK PRESENTATION IN VILNIUS: JULIUS NORWILLA

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Convention Center Project on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery in Disarray; The Opposition to Date; The Paper Trail

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Račinskas’s Red-Brown Commission Announces Triumphant Revival on March 17-19 (his concept of “Holocaust Studies”). Observers ask: Will the Israeli Embassy in Vilnius again provide cover and betray Israeli citizens (Yitzhak Arad, Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Joseph Melamed)? Appeal to the conscience of commission members. A dilemma that faces the Israeli Foreign Ministry in March 2016. See: Israel page and section.

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READERS IN CALIFORNIA: We are lecturing at UCLA 17-20 April 2016. To book lectures, seminars, meetings in the days just before or after, please contact us at: info<at>defendinghistory.com. LIST OF TOPICS.

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16 February 2016

Kaunas Authorities Again Granted City Center on February 16th Independence Day to Far-Right Nationalist March

WILL VILNIUS MAYOR DO THE SAME FOR MARCH 11TH?

The Last Eight Neo-Nazi Marches in Vilnius (2008-2015)

The Mayor’s Colorful Record on Jewish Matters

Kaunas Event Glorified Six Nazi Collaborators

Eyewitness Report and Exclusive Photos of Neo-Nazi March in Central Kaunas

Reports by Tablet, JTA, Jerusalem Post. Defending History’s 9 years of monitoring Vilnius and Kaunas marches. Chronicle of Kaunas marches.

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This year’s theme was a front-of-march We Know Our Nation’s Heroes banner featuring six figures who share the following unsettling common denominator: all were alleged Nazi collaborators and/or Holocaust perpetrators (from left): Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, Jonas Noreika, Povilas Plechavičius, Kazys Škirpa, Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas, and Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis. It is as if the marchers are celebrating the murder of the 30,000 Jewish citizens of Kaunas, the more than 95% of the over 200,000 strong Lithuanian Jewish population on the eve of the Holocaust, and the resulting “cleansing” of Lithuania’s Jewish minority.

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“We, (Jews) will turn Europe into mixture of Asian people — Negroes, ruled by Jews…” — R. Coudenhove-Kalergi, “Father” of European Union. NO TO THE ISLAMIZATION OF LITHUANIA!

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♦ Poland’s right-wing government is latest in Eastern Europe to criminalize speech on the Holocaust, following laws in Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia & Ukraine; Poland’s Far Right attempts to strip Prof. Jan Gross of a state honor for telling the truth about the Holocaust…

♦ New massive digging at Vilnius’s Old Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt?

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26 January 2016

MAJOR NEW BOOK ON THE LITHUANIAN HOLOCAUST AND ITS CURRENT LEGACIES LAUNCHED IN VILNIUS

For the first time, a Lithuanian author teams up with an Israeli Holocaust scholar in search for the truth about widespread local enthusiasm, seventy-five years ago, for mass murder of civilian neighbors, and today’s failures in coming to grips with that history, in a land of hundreds of Jedwabnes. A genuine historic advance in Lithuanian-Jewish relations is seen in the startling partnership of Rūta Vanagaitė and Dr. Efraim Zuroff in Vanagaitė’s Mūsiškiai: Kelionė su priešu (“Our People: Journey with an Enemy”). A selection of the vast media coverage is available here. The book was launched in Vilnius on 26 January 2016.

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NEW SECTIONS:

JAPAN FRANCE

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14 January 2016

Why is the West Afraid to Criticize Nazi-Worship in Ukraine?

James Carden in The Nation on New US Aid for Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi “Azov Battalion”

Sam Sokol in The Jerusalem Post

BUT DOES THE WEST CARE ABOUT “MAINSTREAM” UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT WORSHIP OF STEPAN BANDERA AND OTHER HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS?

UKRAINE SECTION ♦ HOLOCAUST ASPECTS OF THE 2014-2015 MAIDAN PERIOD ♦ COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED SECTION

Cover-Up Attempts Crumbled Back in 2015: Adulation of Holocaust Perpetrators was Confirmed as Poroshenko and Parliament Enacted Laws “Codifying” Fascist-Leaning History and Criminalizing Other Points of View

Foreign Policy Haaretz HNN Jerusalem Post The Nation OSCE New Republic Times of Israel USHMM. BACKGROUND: Dovid Katz in The Times of Israel (+ follow-up).

♦ US Holocaust Museum called on Ukraine to abandon law that would criminalize historic research and make the glorification of Holocaust criminals a national “truth”; OSCE (finally…)

♦ Dozens of Western / Anti-Putin scholars sign letter calling on Ukraine to abandon the law

♦ Article in Foreign Policy called on Ukraine not to shoot itself in foot

♦ The Legacy from 2014: US Representative John Conyers’ original amendment of May 2014 back in Focus; Tom Parfitt’s August 2014 report in London’s Telegraph

♦ Does “mainstream, pro-Western” President Poroshenko, who publicly fools around with Bandera insignia, make light of the hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, and other civilians butchered by Banderist fascist forces in Ukraine?

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♦ In October 2014, Ukraine parliament and president proclaimed a national holiday to celebrate Bandera’s genocidal movement; Report in International Business Times; In tweet, Ukraine’s president said UPA fighters were an “example of heroism”…

♦ Are Ukraine’s ultranationalist supporters stifling free debate in North America? Targeting of the work of Professor Stephen Cohen. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra saga.

♦ The major new monumental book on the genocidal Bandera movement cannot be suppressed much longer . . .

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4 January 2016

Andrius Kulikauskas Speaks Out in Major Lithuanian Publication on Fate of Vilnius’s Piramónt Cemetery in Šnipiškės

AUTHOR’S SUMMARY IN ENGLISH; IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATION

VULOVAK / DEFENDING HISTORY

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PROFESSOR SIDNEY LEIMAN (NY); PLUS DATA FOR RECONSTRUCTION

MILAN CHERSONSKI AND DOVID KATZ

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OPPOSITION PAPER TRAIL HIGH INTRIGUE DH SECTION EU

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OLDER FRONT PAGE POSTS

Posted in Boxes | Comments Off

OLDER FRONT PAGE POSTS

Posted on 20 December 2018 by Defending History

29 December 2015

TALI FARKASH IN YNET:

Israeli Holocaust Researchers Concerned by Politicians’ Cave-in to East European “Holocaust Tricks”

INCLUDING REDEFINITION OF GENOCIDE; GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS AS “FREEDOM FIGHTERS”; AND CAMPAIGN OF REPUTATION DESTRUCTION AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS WHO JOINED THE ANTI-NAZI RESISTANCE

SEE ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE

And will Israel ask, howsoever gently, for public apologies for the three Israeli citizens defamed for history by Lithuania’s prosecutors? All three are heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance in the forests of Lithuania, and two are heroes of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Yitzhak Arad (who has spoken out in Defending History) is still defamed on prosecutors’ website [as PDF] and by a “Human Rights [!] Association”. Hopes rising for 2016 that the Israeli Embassy in Vilnius will rapidly obtain public apologies to the Israeli citizens Yitzhak Arad, Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Joseph Melamed.

Suspense growing on whether Vilnius’s Israeli Embassy will provide cover for the renewed international meeting of the long-dormant “Red Brown Commission” that is scheduled for 17-19 March 2016. Will Yad Vashem legitimize the event? Israeli Holocaust survivors begged Yad Vashem to keep its distance. Commission members include the Genocide Center veteran who launched the campaign of defamation against Yitzhak Arad. Dr. Arad’s analysis of the commission and its policies. The commission’s concept of Holocaust studies…

2009 speech of the late Ambassador of Israel to Lithuania & Latvia HE Chen Ivri Apter. Back then it was clear that Israel could build terrific relations without betraying Israeli citizens, Holocaust survivors, history of the Holocaust, or the integrity of Jewish cemeteries in post-Holocaust Europe.

In September 2015, during his trip to Israel, the Lithuanian prime minister reported back home with triumph that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quite happy with plans for a $25,000,000 national conference center in the middle of the old (15th century origin) Piramónt (Šnipiškės) Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. But did the Israeli PM really reject out-of-hand the growing international Jewish (and non-Jewish) chorus of condemnation for a plan to have convention revelers clap, cheer, sing, drink in bars and use toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves including some of the foremost Jewish scholars of the last millennium? Where his own ancestors are buried? Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding. Background on the cemetery’s history and implications of the case for all Europe, and on the current project.

SEVEN SOLUTIONS TO LITHUANIAN-JEWISH ISSUES

ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE ISRAEL SECTION DH BY COUNTRY

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24 December 2015

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė Calls on Police and Politicians Alike to Take Racism Seriously

More from Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on Roma, Human Rights, and Antisemitism

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18 December 2015

Most Lithuanian Citizens Not Aware that State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” (GC) is the only (?) Gov. Body in the EU in the Business of Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators

Defending History led the way in 2010 with page and section exposing the GC (which runs the city-center “Genocide Museum”)

NEW: ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS REPLIES TO GENOCIDE CENTER’S NEW ATTEMPT TO “FIX” HOLOCAUST RECORD OF KAZYS ŠKIRPA

Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė Asks Why State Body Distorts History; Appeal by Sergejus Kanovičius

GRANT ARTHUR GOCHIN , SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER, JEWISH STUDENT UNION, AND JEWISH COMMUNITY LEADER RESPOND TO GC’S RECENT EFFORTS TO “FIX” HOLOCAUST RECORD OF JONAS NOREIKA.

VILNIUS STILL BOASTS STREET NAMES AND SHRINES HONORING HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS. WILL THE NEW MAYOR CHANGE THINGS?

Genocide Center veteran who launched the campaign against Holocaust survivors is now a member of the state’s “Red-Brown Commission”

DEFENDING HISTORY WRITER EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS (WHO ALERTED ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD TO NOREIKA MONUMENTS IN 2012) IS REPEATEDLY LUGGED INTO COURT FOR HIS ARTICLES PROTESTING GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS AND NEO-NAZI MARCHES. COME SUPPORT HIM AT THE NEXT HEARING: THURSDAY 21 JANUARY 2016 AT VILNIUS COUNTY COURT (LAISVĖS PROSPEKTAS 79A, ROOM 019) AT 1:30 PM (13:30)

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December 2015

Defending Holocaust History Against the New Revisionism:

Reviews of Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth by

Michael Pinto-Duschinsky; Richard J. Evans (2); Tina Jennings; Walter Laqueur

RELATED: RESPECTFULLY DISAGREEING WITH PROF. SNYDER

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9 December 2015

Neo-Nazis Target Defending History Authors who Attended Private Vilnius Hanukkah Party; Will Police Investigate?

Assault follows publication of Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė’s new critique of the Genocide Center, published in DH; Neo-Nazi blogger “Zeppelinus”, Lithuania’s top online purveyor of racism, misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism, is alleged to be a high official in the Economy Ministry

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Meanwhile, “Genocide Center” Turns to Antisemitic Slurs in Reply to Critics of its Sanitization of Holocaust Perpetrators

Grant Arthur Gochin in VilNews.com ◊ Defending History section on the Genocide Center (plus page) ◊ 2015 debate over J. Noreika ◊ One of many perpetrators glorified by state agencies (plus section) ◊ Hopes rising that Yad Vashem will finally sever ties with “Red-Brown Commission” where its presence legitimizes the G-Center ◊ Lithuania issues facing Israel today (Israel page) ◊ Last Litvak Holocaust survivors begged Yad Vashem not to renew the legitimizing alliance…

Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas (who in 2012 launched the international discussion on the state honors for Noreika) continues to be lugged into court on a regular basis in malicious time-wasting actions apparently intended to deter other dissenters on the policy of glorifying collaborators. More below. Section on free speech and democracy. Indirect consequences of the 2010 “double genocide” law.

ALSO: A SECOND CASE PURSUED OVER “DEFAMATION” OF ANOTHER ALLEGED COLLABORATOR; KRISTINA SULIKIENE COMMENTS.

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COME AND SUPPORT EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS THURSDAY 21 JANUARY 2016 AT VILNIUS COUNTY COURT (LAISVĖS PROSPEKTAS 79A, ROOM 019) AT 1:30 PM (13:30)

Left to right: Evaldas Balčiūnas, Milan Chersonski and Darius Pocevičius on Monday 30 Nov. 2015 after another “totally time-wasting” hearing in the case against Balčiūnas and Pocevičius for their articles condemning fascism and the adulation of Holocaust collaborators. A more substantial hearing is now promised for Thursday 10 December, 3:30 PM (15:30), as ever at Vilnius District Court at Laisves prospektas 79a. Hopefully at long last human rights and free speech advocates, and opponents of Holocaust falsification will come to monitor. They are still looking for a pro bono human rights lawyer. For background (for English readers) please see Evaldas’s articles (and the legal harassment he has been enduring) by scrolling to the end and surveying chronologically (upwards) his articles exposing the glorification of Holocaust collaborators.

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16 November 2015

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė Appeals for Gov. Action on Roma in Lithuania

“It just can’t be left to the local NGOs!”

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November 2015

LIVING YIDDISH CULTURE IN VILNIUS

The Vilna Yiddish Literary Reading Circle, in its 17th year, meets weekly in termtime at the Jewish Cultural and Information Center on Mėsinių Street (Yátkever gas) in the Old Town. Everybody welcome! Admission free.

Hanukkah in Vilnius: Dovid Katz in the Lithuania Tribune

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2 November 2015

Vytautas Landsbergis, Hero of Lithuanian Independence, Shocks Many with “Defense” of Holocaust Perpetrator Jonas Noreika

Icon of freedom struggle now attacks journalist Rimvydas Valatka (who supported a petition last summer for removal of a Vilnius shrine to the Nazi collaborator) and Defending History regular Evaldas Balčiūnas (for asking why Lithuania honors such Nazist figures). Balčiūnas’s rapid reply. Earlier DH appraisal of Landsbergis’s 21st century positions.

BACKGROUND TO THE DEBATE

IN DRAMATIC REVERSAL ON GENOCIDE CENTER, LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY CHAIRPERSON FAINA KUKLIANSKY BLASTS CENTER FOR WHITEWASHING THE HOLOCAUST COLLABORATOR. IN A HISTORIC STATEMENT (BRINGING HER INTO BROAD AGREEMENT WITH DH’S LONGSTANDING CRITIQUE) SHE ASKS WHAT KIND OF “HOLOCAUST EDUCATION” CAN PROCEED IN SUCH A CONTEXT. JEWISH STUDENT LEADER AMIT BELAITĖ SPEAKS OUT WITH SINGULAR COURAGE.

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NEW IN NOVEMBER 2015:

QUESTION IN UK PARLIAMENT ON PLANNED CONVENTION CENTER IN THE OLD VILNIUS JEWISH CEMETERY

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OUR REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF VILNIUS ON A BIZARRE OLYMPICS OF BARBARISM

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21 October 2015

Defending the History Brings Results

I

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS STRIKES DOWN A BALTIC “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” LAW

LEGAL JUDGMENT, OVERTURNING LITHUANIAN CONVICTION OF A POSTWAR SOVIET CRIMINAL OF “GENOCIDE” IS MAJOR BLOW TO EAST EUROPEAN FAR-RIGHT “PRAGUE DECLARATION” PRINCIPLE OF “EQUALITY” OF NAZI AND SOVIET CRIMES.

DOUBLE GENOCIDE MOVEMENT’S “HIGHER PURPOSES” IN MUCH OF EASTERN EUROPE INCLUDE DOWNGRADE OF THE HOLOCAUST AND GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS (SAMPLE STREET NAMES / PUBLIC SHRINES).

ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION BY DOUBLE GENOCIDE PRACTITIONERS REMAINS A CONCERN IN EASTERN EUROPE. REPORT IN THE JERUSALEM POST.

II

European Union Says NO to Support for “Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery”

Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission:

“Contrary to reports in some Lithuanian newspapers and international media, the planned renovation project at the Vilnius Snipisek cemetery is not supported by European Union funds”

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION MOUNTING

III

Vilnius Municipality Inaugurates Ona Shimaite Street, Named for Famed Holocaust Rescuer, in the Old City

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October 2015

DEFENDING HISTORY WAS THERE SO YOU CAN READ EYEWITNESS REPORTS AND OPINIONS RIGHT HERE

Reports from: Butrimánts (Butrimonys); Rákishok (Rokiškis); Shádov (Šeduva); Šiauliai (Shavl); and Svintsyán (Švenčionys); in Kaunas for Chiune Sugihara; remembering Lietukis Garage

And in Vilnius: Ponár memorial ceremony; launch of the new Ona Shimaite Street; Yivo 90th anniversary conference; conference on antisemitism (plus: reply to neo-Nazis’ reaction to our report); Ruta Vanagaite’s conference on Holocaust issues; Rothschild Conference on Jewish Cemeteries: preview and postview (but no eyewitness report — DH not allowed in to “sealed” event)

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29 October 2015

Triumphant Press Release on Conclusion of Rothschild’s Jewish Cemeteries Conference Whitewashes Lithuanian Gov. Plan to Desecrate Old Jewish Cemetery with $25,000,000 Convention Center

KAUNAS RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY ISSUES PROTEST

UPDATE: ROTHSCHILD FOUNDATION ASPECTS (DH SECTION)

One-Sided Conference had Nobody to Represent Second Opinion; Massive International Opposition Remained Terra Incognita to Delegates

Conference press release invokes summaries of views of major foreign heritage specialists who took part in the conference. But their own statements awaited. Click here for a directory of opponents, including Holocaust survivors, heritage specialists and others in Vilnius whom delegates would have enjoyed hearing out.

The official conference summary wholly omits what is actually planned for the site: a $25,000,000 convention center where tens of thousands will cheer, clap, drink at bars and use toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves spanning half a millennium (not the treatment given to Lithuanian Christian cemeteries where thousands of great scholars are buried). It is potentially the worst state-sponsored cemetery desecration in recent history. Observations of chief rabbi, EU president, protestant pastor, Vilna Holocaust survivor, Jewish resident, Kaunas synagogue, Litvak rabbis’ groups, and groups representing thousands of others.

What the chief rabbi said, and why he was recently dismissed. Why did the conference not hear from him too (even by skype)? Old Vilna humor returns with a vengeance as authorities look for a new chief rabbi who needs to have a most unusual qualification for the job. More here.

OPPOSITION PAPER TRAIL HIGH INTRIGUE DH SECTION EU ASPECTS

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22 October 2015

Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė Completes Official Visit to Israel

LITHUANIA TRIBUNE / DELFI; JERUSALEM POST

Hopes Dashed She Would Announce Cancellation of “Vilnius Convention Center in the Old Jewish Cemetery” and Promise to Remove Public Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators

Leading international NGO dedicated to Jewish cemetery preservation appealed directly to Lithuania’s president after her moving visit to Yad Vashem (in Matzav.com)

President intimated to questioner that neo-Nazi marches in major cities don’t use Nazi symbols. Is the swastika (legalized in Lithuania in 2010) a Nazi symbol? See eyewitness reports and photos of recent years’ marches. But does the president sing a different tune to local journalists?

ISRAELI HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS AND THEIR FAMILIES HOPED ISRAEL WOULD POLITELY BRING UP THE URGENT NEED FOR APOLOGIES TO DEFAMED SURVIVORS AND PARTISAN HEROES, INCLUDING THREE OF ITS OWN CITIZENS: YITZHAK ARAD; JOSEPH MELAMED; AND RACHEL MARGOLIS (1921-2015)

SEVEN AREAS OF LITHUANIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS REQUIRING OPEN DISCUSSION, NOT SWEEPING UNDER THE CARPET

SHE BROUGHT ALONG ECONOMY MINISTER: DID ANY JOURNALIST ASK HIM IF COUNTRY’S TOP ANTISEMITIC, RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC BLOG-ARTIST IS STILL HIGH OFFICIAL AT THE MINISTRY? (SAMPLES)

EDITOR’S COMMENT ON EVE OF PRESIDENT’S VISIT

ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE ISRAEL SECTION DH BY COUNTRY

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October 2015

FALLOUT CONTINUES FROM 30 SEPTEMBER ANTISEMITISM CONFERENCE IN VILNIUS

Jerusalem Post. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson. Defending History’s preview and eyewitness report / op-ed (Russian translation). Vilma Fiokla Kiurė’s op-ed.

Neo-Nazi Blogger “Zeppelinus” reacts to DH report. Who is he? Seems he hasn’t liked our editor for a while now. But is the nation’s major purveyor of racist, antisemitic, misogynist, and homophobic hate really a high official at the Ministry of the Economy?

SAMPLES OF HIS “ART”… MORE SAMPLES…

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October 2015

Chaim Bargman, Noted Jewish History Guide from Kaunas, is Prevented by Police from Attending Holocaust Commemoration Ceremony

INCIDENT OCCURRED AT UKMERGĖ (VÍLKOMIR), WHERE BARGMAN AND COMPANION WERE HEADING FOR COMMEMORATION AT FOREST MASS GRAVE FOR UP TO TEN THOUSAND JEWS OF THE REGION SLAUGHTERED IN 1941. DISTURBINGLY, THE TOWN CONTINUES TO DEDICATE A SQUARE TO THE MEMORY OF A NOTORIOUS HOLOCAUST PERPETRATOR.

Our Report Video of Bargman’s Statement Julia Rets’s Report (in Russian)

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2 October 2015

Litvaks Everywhere Mark the Gaon of Vilna’s 218th Yórtsayt

Eylióhu ben Shlèyme-Zálmen (Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, 1720−1797)

19 Tíshrey 5776 / 2 October 2015; Some background reading

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1 October 2015

Vilnius Conference on “Antisemitism, Radicalization and Violent Extremism” Includes Nothing on Current Issues of Antisemitism in Lithuania or Discussion of Solutions

YET ANOTHER EEA SPONSORED “JEWISH LITHUANIA” EVENT WITHOUT A SINGLE LITHUANIAN BORN JEW IN ATTENDANCE

Jerusalem Post

Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson

Defending History’s Preview and Eyewitness Report; Vilma Fiokla Kiurė’s Report

Neo-Nazi Blogger “Zeppelinus” reacts to DH report. Who is he? Seems he hasn’t liked our editor for quite some time… DH’s reply

One of the keynote morning speakers (amateur video) at the 30 Sept. conference, known for his documentary films that ignore the alleged Holocaust atrocities of “heroes” as well as for his incessant Israel-baiting (and of late association with far-right antisemitic Ukrainian nationalists), proposes solving Mideast issues and local antisemitism at once by “bringing the Palestinians to Vilnius, Jerusalem of the North” [!]. Israeli ambassador boldly calls him out (see from timecode 13:17) for “rewriting history” of Israel’s struggles. The organizer, the “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” has record of ignoring antisemitism and failing to even mildly protest neo-Nazi marches in city centers on independence days or the abuse of prosecutorial power to harass Lithuanian truth-tellers about the Holocaust and local antisemitism.

CONFERENCE FEATURED EXCELLENT PRESENTATIONS ON HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN GENERAL, ANTISEMITISM IN GENERAL, AND ISSUES OF ISLAMIST RADICALIZATION IN WESTERN EUROPE. DANGERS OF THE FAR RIGHT DISCUSSED BY SPEAKERS FROM HUNGARY AND NORWAY, IGNORED OR PLASTERED OVER FOR LITHUANIA.

SEE HUMAN RIGHTS SECTIONS

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22 September 2015

Vilnius Mayor Unveils Street Name for City’s Beloved Holocaust Rescuer, Ona Šimaitė

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22 September 2015

Ponár (Paneriai) Commemoration on Lithuania’s Annual Holocaust Day is Dejudaicized Even More in “Nationalist Takeover of Litvak Heritage”: No Rabbi, No Cantor, No Kaddish

But ethnic Lithuanian costume and song are featured at the mass grave of Vilna Jewry. Honor guard with bayoneted rifles was a questionable touch.

There were well-received speeches by (among others) Jewish community chairperson Faina Kukliansky; MP Emanuelis Zingeris; survivor and partisan hero Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky; and president of Beit Vilna in Tel Aviv, Mickey Kantor. There was a well-organized laying of stones by schoolchildren at the main monument.

The Israeli ambassador’s speech was considered a disappointment by some survivors in attendance. There was no mention of the recent death of Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015), an Israeli-Lithuanian citizen, and Vilna Ghetto and anti-Nazi partisan hero. She discovered and published Kazimierz Sakowicz’s long lost eyewitness diary revealing the gruesome truth about Ponár. She dreamt of one last trip to her native Vilna but was intimidated by the prosecutors’ campaign of defamation against her and other Jewish partisan heroes. It was a sharp and painful contrast with the stirring and unforgettable words of the late Israeli ambassador to the Baltics, Chen Ivri Apter. Margolis’s life was considered worthy of note by, among many others, Lithuania’s late president, Algirdas Brazauskas, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown, the ADL’s Abraham Foxman, the late Sir Martin Gilbert, a British House of Lords member, and five members of the US Congress.

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20 September 2015

ON-SITE REPORT ON YIVO CONFERENCE IN VILNIUS

Sept-Oct 2015

The Old Jewish Cemetery Gets Pretty Lively in Vilnius

“Only conventions here, with bars, entertainment and toilets. But no concerts allowed! The Jewish graves all around make a cool backdrop for our 2018 national centennial holiday!”

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Prime Minister, Assuring that Convention-Center-on-the-Jewish-Cemetery Will Feature “Conventions, Not Concerts” Wants Project to Mark Centennial of Nation’s Independence

RECENT REPORTS IN JERUSALEM POST, JTA, TIMES OF ISRAEL, i24

MAJOR NEW ESSAY BY PROFESSOR SIDNEY LEIMAN

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION COMES FROM TOP LITVAK RABBIS, JEWISH LEADERS AND VILNIUS RESIDENTS AND SCIONS, INCLUDING HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, ORTHODOX KASHRUTH SPECIALIST, URBAN PLANNING PROFESSOR, VILNA GAON SPECIALIST, CHIEF RABBI (THEREAFTER SACKED FOR HIS VIEWS) AND PROTESTANT PASTOR

PAPER TRAIL ♦ OPPOSITION TO DATE ♦ HIGH INTRIGUE ♦ DH SECTION ♦ WIKILEAKS ON EARLIER PAYMENTS TO THE ONE GROUP OF “AGREEABLE” HASIDIC RABBIS IN LONDON, THEMSELVES ROUNDLY OVERRULED BY THE CHIEF SATMAR COURT IN NEW YORK CITY AND THE CRC

WASHINGTON DC: WHERE IS THE “US COMMISSION FOR PRESERVING AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD”?

Jewish Circles in Vilnius Enjoy Wry Moment of Rarefied Litvak Humor

IS THE COMMITTEE CHOOSING THE NEW CHIEF RABBI REALLY BOUND TO ENSURE HE WILL BE “GOVERNMENT MAN” AND SUPPORT A $25,000,000 CONVENTION CENTER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY’S OLD JEWISH CEMETERY? DE-LEGITIMIZED FROM DAY ONE?

LAST CHIEF RABBI KICKED OUT OVER THE ISSUE

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION ♦ PAPER TRAIL ♦ HIGH INTRIGUE ♦ RECENT REPORTS IN THE JERUSALEM POST, JTA AND TIMES OF ISRAEL

Professor Sid Leiman explains Jewish law on cemeteries and gives sweeping history of Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery and the repeated attempts to abuse its land. He is author of the classic study on who is buried in the Gaon of Vina’s mausoleum and is a world expert on Vilna’s Jewish heritage who has generously assisted projects in Lithuania’s Jewish community for decades.

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15 September 2015

Israel Faced Some Delicate Post-Holocaust Issues During Lithuanian PM’s September Visit

Efraim Zuroff asked in the Jerusalem Post that the Baltic state’s campaign to revise Holocaust history — and its plans to plonk a convention center in the middle of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery — be on the table; Zuroff’s post-visit article in i24

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION TO “CONVENTION CENTER IN THE JEWISH CEMETERY”

PAPER TRAIL

ISRAEL PAGE

ISRAEL SECTION

7 SOLUTIONS

AFTER MEETING NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER BUTKEVICIUS GLOATS TO MEDIA THAT ISRAEL DOESN’T OBJECT TO THE “GRAVEYARD CONVENTION CENTER” DESPITE INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION; JTA REPORT; IN THE JERUSALEM POST

CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEWISH PARTISANS NOT EVEN MENTIONED? Does Israel betray its own citizens by not asking apologies for the World War II heroes Yitzhak Arad, (the late) Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed? Arad and Melamed are heroes of Israel’s 1948 war of independence. Will there now be a public apology on the prosecutors’ page that still defames him [as PDF] and from the “Human Rights Association”? Apologies to Israeli citizens Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed? The 2009 Leivick House (Tel Aviv) speech of the late Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter. What does Dr. Arad think?

BUT PM DECRIED “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” IN PUBLIC (JP REPORT). HE WILL HOPEFULLY FOLLOW UP AT HOME ON STREET NAMES AND PUBLIC HONORS FOR HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS [CURRENT DEBATE]; OVERDUE APOLOGIES TO JEWISH PARTISANS; RAPID REFORM OR ABOLITION OF GENOCIDE CENTER AND RED-BROWN COMMISSION — AND REPUDIATION OF THE PRAGUE DECLARATION. NEO-NAZI PARADES ON INDEPENDENCE DAYS?

RECENT MEDIA: Slate. The Forward. Jerusalem Post. JTA. Times of Israel.

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URI CHANOCH

1928 — 2015

MEMORIES AND TRIBUTES ON FACEBOOK

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6 September 2015

At Long Last, Rokiškis (Yiddish: Rákishok; Rákeshik), Town in Northeastern Lithuania, Erects Memorial to Aspect of Its Jewish Past

Mayor unveils trilingual plaque for three (destroyed) synagogues. Before the war, they were painted in the colors of the Lithuanian flag to express civic loyalty

BUT TOWN’S CENTRAL SQUARE STILL FEATURES AN “INTERWAR SWASTIKA”

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4 September 2015

Lithuanian Postal Service Honors Sugihara and Zwartendijk on 75th Anniversary of “Visas for Life”

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1 September 2015

OPPOSITION TO PLANNED $25,000,000 VILNIUS “GRAVEYARD CONVENTION CENTER” MOUNTS BY THE DAY

Latest in JTA: in the Jerusalem Post: first, second, third article; in Defending History; Everywhere; A Tale of High Intrigue. But anonymous editorial on Jewish community [!?] website makes fun of those who believe cemetery’s sanctity is violated by a $25,000,000 convention center with further plans for circuses and hotels, claiming that a “garbage dump”, “drugs” and “graffiti” [?!] are the only alternatives… Why was chief rabbi fired? Are the names Soloveitchik, Kotler, Feinstein, Kamenetzkty still dear to Litvaks? Motke Chabad on criteria for new chief rabbi…

“It’s because of the Holocaust that the thousands of deceased — spanning 500 years of Vilna Jewish history — who lie in the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės) in today’s Vilnius have no descendants to stand up for the integrity of their final resting place. The cheers, hoorahs, drinks and washrooms at conventions — all surrounded by graves — would be a blister on the city’s reputation for the next century. It sure wouldn’t happen at a Christian cemetery. Is this what the mayor wants to be remembered for? Fight this one for our beautiful city Vilnius!”

INTERNATIONAL PAPER TRAIL

NEW DH SECTION

BUT GROUP OF NON-LITVAK ULTRA-ORTHODOX LONDON RABBIS issues a 1 Sept. Hebrew proclamation supporting CPJCE, signed by Rabbis E. Schlesinger; A.D. Dunner; Z. Feldman; J. Padwa; B. Bloom; E. Shechter; S. Lew; J.B. Wosner; M.C.E. Padwa. Did they understand what they were signing? Have they seen the unanimous judgments of rabbis internationally? Do they really feel comfortable blessing a convention center surrounded by thousands of Vilna Jewish graves in the face of the judgments issued by top Litvak Rabbis Feinstein, Kotler, Kamenetsky and Soloveitchik (and remarkably, by the highest Satmar hasidic court too)? Would they wish to know about a Vilna Holocaust survivor’s view, or that of an Orthodox woman, both lifetime members of the Jewish community in Vilnius?

DEMANDS FOR TRANSPARENCY: In 2009, the CPJCE demanded US $100,000 (in supervision fees) for some “beautification” and “exploratory digging” on the old Vilna cemetery. What are their fees this time around, for supervising a $25,000,000 convention center?

A TALE OF HIGH INTRIGUE. CHRONOLOGY OF MISADVENTURES.

APPEALS TO THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

“US COMMISSION FOR PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD” MAINTAINS A DISCONCERTING SILENCE (AFTER DOCUMENTED CONFLICTS OF INTEREST) AS LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT’S STALWARTS CLAIM TO AGAIN MANIPULATE IT (WITH DISINFORMATION?). ONE COMMISSION MEMBER JOINS DELEGATION TO NY CONSULATE TO “THANK” GOV. FOR “SAVING THE CEMETERY”. MEANWHILE, JERUSALEM POST EXPOSES PAYMENTS TO RABBIS WHO APPROVE BUILDING ON VILNA’S OLD JEWISH CEMETERY. FOLLOWED BY EXPOSURE OF “MONEY FOR GRAVES” BY JTA.

WHAT ARE THE VIEWS OF THE NEW “HERITAGE COMMISSION”? (ENG); WHAT ARE THE VIEWS OF “THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION”?

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Litvak Rabbis Visit Vilnius to Plea for Cancellation of Plan to Put New Convention Center in City’s Old Jewish Cemetery

They are received by deputy chancellor, mayor of Vilnius, head of Jewish Community

MEDIA: BNS’S “MISLEADING” REPORT ON THE RABBIS’ ACTUAL MESSAGE (BNS’S CORRECTED VERSION); THE RABBIS’ OWN PRESS RELEASE; REPORT IN HAPÉLES; JERUSALEM POST; THE YESHIVA WORLD.

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At the meeting with Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius (right to left): Rabbi David Niederman (Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada); Rabbi Osher Kalmanowitz (dean of Mir Yeshiva, Brooklyn, N.Y.); Rabbi Avrohom Yaffe Schlesinger (chief rabbi of the Orthodox community in Geneva, Switzlerand); Rabbi Malkiel Kotler (dean of Beth Medrash Govoha, Lakewood, N.J.).

5 rabonim at the Sports Palace (25 Aug 2015)

At the old Soviet Sports Palace on the old cemetery (left to right): Rabbi Osher Kalmanowitz, Rabbi Schlesinger, Dr. Schaps, Rabbi David Niederman, Rabbi Chizki Kalmanowitz (Asra Kadisha, Jerusalem).

Litvak-Hasidic Solidarity: Judgment by Satmar Rabbinical Court in Brooklyn (with Rebbe’s Signature) is Released for Publication after Top Litvak Rabbis in the United States (including Feinstein and Kotler) and in Israel (with Soloveitchik and Landa) Issue their Own Condemnation of Lithuanian Government’s Plan for $25,000,000 Convention Center Surrounded by Thousands of Vilna Jewish Graves

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Chief Rabbi of Lithuania Chaim Burshtein is Dismissed Following Opposition to Government’s Convention-Center Plans for Old Jewish Cemetery

JERUSALEM POST JTA BNS COMMUNITY’S WEBSITE DEFENDING HISTORY RABBI’S STATEMENT

NEO-NAZI ACTIVIST “ZEPPELINUS” URGES HEAD OF JEWISH COMMUNITY TO FOLLOW SUIT WITH EXPULSION OF DH EDITOR; HIS EARLIER PRODUCTIONS; IDENTITY; RACIST HATE CAMPAIGN; EARLIER IN 2015

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THE EU DIMENSION:

European Union Spokesperson Explains that Millions in EU “Structural Funds” for “Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery” may be Decided by Lithuania’s Finance Ministry

CEMETERY BLUES:

TALE OF HIGH INTRIGUE. THE PAPER TRAIL. THE NEW DH SECTION. THE MOUNTING INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION.

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Grant Arthur Gochin in the Jerusalem Post on Memorials for Holocaust Perpetrator J. Noreika in Central Vilnius

Who was Noreika? Street Names for Nazis? Reburials? More Honors?

Holocaust perpetrator as national hero?

Liberal Lithuanian intellectuals petitioning city’s mayor for removal of shrines. But nationalist media considers the very discussion to be “a Russian plot”. Focus of debate is an obscure plaque but main Noreika shrine in the capital is towering engraved stone (above) on the “Genocide Museum” on Gedimino Boulevard, a stone’s throw from parliament.

Meanwhile, Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė reports on her efforts with mayor of Kaunas on street names for another killer. See also the Evaldas Balčiūnas section.

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6 July 2015

ROKHL MARGOLIS

Vilna, 28 October 1921 — Rehovot, 6 July 2015

צו די שלשים: ד″ר רחל מאַרגאָליס (מַרְגָלִית) ז″ל

Yiddishists in Vilnius Remember Dr. Rachel Margolis

A Yiddish appreciation from 2008: Part 1 & Part 2

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Summer 2015

≡≡ NEWS ≡≡

Daniel Brook in Slate on “Double Genocide: Lithuania Wants to Erase History of Nazi Collaboration — by Accusing Jewish Partisans who Fought the Germans of War Crimes” [PS: State Red-Brown Commission’s Stand on the Holocaust Recently Reaffirmed]

Also: Jonathan Paul Katz in the Forward

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Will Belgrade Court Rehabilitate Yugoslav Nazi Collaborator?

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Defending History Calls for Removal of Street Names and Public Shrines to Nazi Collaborators in the Baltics

Also: Sergey Kanovich in i24 on Lithuania’s Real and False Heroes

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Czech MEP Invites Pro-Nazi Ukrainian Leader to the European Parliament

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Does the New York Times Cover for East European Holocaust Revisionism?

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Ruta Bloshtein of Vilnius Calls Convention Center Project in City’s Old Jewish Cemetery “Barbaric”

Also: Vilna Holocaust Survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg in The Times of Israel; Ken Slade’s Poem: The “Former” Grave-Place

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June 2015

Some “Jewish Decisions” Face Vilnius’s New Mayor:

♦ Will he remove street names, plaques and memorials for Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators? BACKGROUND

♦ What does he think of some parliamentarians’ efforts to make the former “Jerusalem of Lithuania” host to June 23rd 2016 75th anniversary celebrations of the effective onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust?

♦ Is the middle of the old Jewish cemetery really the right place for the new $25,000,000 convention center? BACKGROUND

♦ Past encounters with Jewish and Holocaust issues (from his days as justice minister)

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Spring 2015

Trix & Treats for Londoners in Vilnius?

Why did Lithuania’s Prime Minister Entertain Non-Litvak (“Galitsyáner”) Rabbis from London to “Permit” a $25,000,000 Convention Center Project in the Heart of the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

**All three Vilnius rabbis were excluded from the conversation. And — an international (secular) “Heritage Commission” was set up to save Jewish cemeteries…**

Above: Prime Minister of Lithuania Algirdas Butkevičius welcomes London-based rabbis from CPJCE who “permitted” a $25,000,000 convention center project for the middle of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. Below: Government’s top Jewish affairs maestro Lina Saulėnaitė entertains the delegation. PM is 3rd from left. A 2009 document refers to these rabbis being paid $100,000 for “supervising” some “beautification” and “exploratory digging” but what are they being paid this time, for “supervising” construction of the convention and entertainment center?

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NEW DH SECTION ON THE OLD VILNA CEMETERY

BACKGROUND PAPER TRAIL MORE BELOW

SECRET 2009 DEAL? SECRET PAYMENTS? SECRET 2015 PP?

Who opposes the convention center project and why?

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“In my view, it is a bad idea for our old cemetery to be the foundation for a convention center where people will be cheering, dancing, jumping, singing, and drinking in the convention center’s bars.”

— Professor Pinchos Fridberg (Vilnius Holocaust Survivor)

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“Would these building projects be pursued if the cemeteries in question were the resting places of Catholics, Protestant Christians, or other non-Jewish people?”

— Pastor Michael Maass (Director of the Lithuanian Branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem)

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Spring 2015

Inspiring Voices of Courage from Lithuania

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis ♦ Evaldas Balčiūnas ♦ Saulius Beržinis ♦ Milan Chersonski ♦ Algis Davidavičius ♦ Leonidas Donskis ♦ Pinchos Fridberg ♦ Vilma Fiokla Kiurė ♦ Rachel Kostanian ♦ Faina Kukliansky ♦ Andrius Kulikauskas ♦ Michael & Fausta Maass ♦ Julius Norwilla ♦ Rūta Vanagaitė ♦ Geoff Vasil ♦ Tomas Venclova ♦ Lina Žigelytė

AND MANY MORE

Visit our AUTHORS page

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June-July 20152015

Do EU/NATO Countries in Eastern Europe Really Want to Celebrate Anniversaries of Outbreak of the Holocaust?

23 June 2016: Lithuanian Parliament Publishes MP’s Proposal for Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust as Supposed Glorious Uprising against the Soviets (who were running from the Nazis’ Barbarossa invasion, not from the Jew-killers)

♦ Last time around (70th anniversary in 2011) ♦ Jewish community’s reaction ♦ Leonidas Donskis’s reaction ♦ Reburial of the “hero” in 2012 ♦ Revival of the old Liekis proposals? ♦ All to be covered by PR Judaic-Yiddish jamborees? ♦ This year’s official initiative comes from the Homeland Union Conservatives

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July 2015

רחל מאַרגאָליס (מַרְגָלִית) ז″ל

Rachel Margolis

Vilna, 28 October 1921 — Rehovot, 6 July 2015

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About Rachel Margolis: Shimon Alperovich, Algirdas Brazauskas, Gordon Brown, Abraham Foxman, Steinar Gil, Martin Gilbert, Chen Ivri Apter, Dovid Katz (Y), Francois Laumonier, NCSJ, Geoff Vasil. UK House of Lords, 5 US Congressmen, 9 Western ambassadors in Vilnius.

Left her safe haven with righteous Christians to join her family in the Vilna Ghetto. Joined the Jewish underground anti-Nazi resistance. Witness to creation of the Yiddish partisan hymn.

Escaped to join the partisans and fought valiantly against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania. The only one in her family to survive the Holocaust.

Volunteered for the short-lived Jewish museum after the war.

Dedicated half a century to Biology, as PhD and professor, at Vilnius University.

Helped establish the Green House Holocaust museum in Vilnius. Rediscovered, deciphered and published Kazimierz Sakowicz’s diary of Ponár. Author of a remarkable memoir. Beloved guide, lecturer and teacher on Jewish Vilna and the Holocaust. A beloved lecturer at the Vilnius Summer Program in Yiddish untl prosecutors’ threats prevented her coming in 2008 and beyond. Will there be a session honoring her at this summer’s program? Will students be told about her accomplishments?

Target of a campaign of defamation by Vilnius prosecutors, the “Lithuanian Human Rights Association” and other far-right Holocaust-revisionist elites. In 2009, she was excluded from the Jerusalem Book Fair, and betrayed by Indiana University’s Bloomington-Borns Yiddish program at a Jerusalem conference exposed as sham by Prof. Dov Levin. In 2011, Yivo shunned her at its Vilna Ghetto memorial events, preferring to honor the then antisemitic foreign minister of Lithuania.

At 90, she was afraid to return to her beloved Vilna for one last visit she yearned for. The Lithuanian government refused to reach out to her, its ambassadors in Israel would not acknowledge her, while prosecutors repeated threats of kangaroo “war crimes investigation” (most recently for the record in the 2012 documentary “Rewriting History“).

The government of Lithuania forfeited a precious chance to cap the 700 year Jewish history in the country on a more noble note than police coming to look for Dr. Rachel Margolis in Vilnius…

Rachel Margolis (second from right) honored at Tel Aviv’s Leivick House in June 2009. From left to right: Dalia and Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter; Prof. Dov Levin; Prof. Israel Bartal; Prof. Dovid Katz; Leivick House director Daniel Galay.

VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL MARGOLIS: 1 and 2

MORE INFORMATION AND TRIBUTES:

RACHEL MARGOLIS FACT SHEET ♦ FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN ♦ 5 MEMBERS OF THE US CONGRESS ♦ ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS ♦ KEENE STATE COLLEGE ♦ SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ♦ LORD JANNER OF BRAUNSTONE ♦ LATE LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS ♦ ISRAELI AMBASSADOR CHEN IVRI APTER ♦ ADL DIRECTOR ABRAHAM FOXMAN ♦ NCSJ ♦ METRO WEST HOLOCAUST COUNCIL ♦ LEIVICK HOUSE TEL AVIV ♦ JEWISH CHRONICLE ♦ ALGEMEINER JOURNAL (& 2) ♦ RACHEL MARGOLIS.COM

OCTOBER 2012 UPDATE: VIDEO RELEASED OF THE LATE AMBASSADOR CHEN IVRI APTER’S 2009 SPEECH AT LEIVICK HOUSE, TEL AVIV

**Coverage in Defending History:**

OVERVIEWS HERE & HERE; 7 MAY 2008; 19 JUNE 2009; 28 OCTOBER 2009; 27 JANUARY 2010; 28 OCTOBER 2010; 3 JANUARY 2011; 5 MAY 2011; 28 AUGUST 2011; 23 SEPTEMBER 2011.

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Spring 2015

Protests Mount over $25,000,000 Convention Center Project in Heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Protestant Pastor Asks if Such a Fate Would be In Store for a Christian Cemetery? Second Pastor Calls on Vilnius Mayor to Act

Discrimination Also Noted by Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada

NEW DH SECTION ON THE OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY

A NEST OF HIGH STATE INTRIGUE?

THE PAPER TRAIL TO DATE

ONE YEAR AGO THE U.S. CONGRESS PASSED LEGISLATION PROTECTING FOREIGN CEMETERIES OF MINORITIES UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACT

BUT HAS THE U.S. COMMISSION TO PROTECT HERITAGE ABROAD NOW BEEN COMPROMISED IN THE VILNIUS CEMETERY FRACAS?

Jewish Protests Mount: Chief Rabbi of Lithuania; Holocaust Survivor in Vilnius; Vilna Gaon Synagogue in Tel Aviv; Litvak Heads of Yeshivas in Israel; Dr. Bernard Fryshman (CAPJC); Simon Wiesenthal Center.

דער אַלטער ווילנער בית⸗עולם אויף פּיראַמאָנט, נעבעך

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Rabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer, President of World HaGró (Gaon of Vilna) Center, Coeditor of 70 Gaon Books, Issues Rabbinic Judgment on Convention Center Plans

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Vilnius Holocaust Survivor and Protestant Pastor Speak Out

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June 2015

Yet Another Book that Whitewashes the Latvian Holocaust’s Local Perpetrators

REPORT BY ROLAND BINET

Ukrainian Ultranationalists’ Poster with Swastikas & Other Hitlerist Icons in Weston-on-Trent in Derbyshire, England

REPORT BY J. NORTH

Why is the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Afraid to Tell its Audience About the Nazi Career of its Featured Composer?

REPORT BY RONALD C. KENT

Vilnius: Right-Wing Parliamentarians Try Again to Make June 23rd — Onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust by Local “Patriots” — Into National Day of Celebration

June 23rd 2016 will mark the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Holocaust in dozens of Lithuanian towns. The Soviet army was fleeing Hitler’s invasion of 22 June 1941 (the largest invasion in human history), not the LAF murderers, but some nationalists, antisemites, Double Genociders and far-right revisionists want to turn Holocaust perpetrators into “anti-Soviet rebels.” See details from the last time around, the 70th anniversary of 2011. Defending History was there to cover it all: The events, the LAF’s intentions, the Jewish Community’s response, the government attempts to play double games. See also Brandišauskas’s classic critique of an earlier attempt by Liekis to turn the reign of Hitlerist terror into a glorious chapter of modern history.

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Spring 2015

A Regional Problem?

Some East European Elites Seem to Need to Honor Holocaust Collaborators (while wooing the West as well)

Croatia • Hungary • Latvia • Lithuania • Ukraine

MICHAEL SHAFIR’S NEW PAPER ON HOLOCAUST DEFLECTION AND OBFUSCATION

Come and Check Out Defending History BY COUNTRY

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8 May 2015

Lithuania’s President and Entourage Lay Wreaths at Ponár on May 8th…

VIDEO

Dovid Katz in Times of Israel (11 May)

Efraim Zuroff in i24 (12 May)

“Equally” at Monuments for Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish Victims, but Skipping the Stone Commemorating the 7,514 Red Army Prisoners of Various Nationalities Starved and Murdered at the Site.

NO WREATHS HERE. Presidential wreaths for all but this one: modest plaque in memory of 7,514 Red Army prisoners-of-war, of various nationalities, starved and murdered.

The Lithuanian monument bewreathed on May 8th is not for Lithuanian civilians or anti-Nazis, but for a group of volunteers for pro-Nazi service who were then shot for alleged desertion. The one Jewish MP paid tribute there as well.

May 8th (Western Europe) and May 9th (Eastern Europe) Commemorate the Allied Victory over Hitler in Europe. But the government’s commemoration activities offered zero mention of the sacrifices of the forces that defeated Hitler and brought an end to the genocide at Ponár.

ANOTHER SHOCK FOR VETERANS AND SURVIVORS, AND FOR OBSERVERS OF THE CAMPAIGN TO USURP THE MASS MURDER SITE OF VILNA JEWRY — AND THE HOLOCAUST — FOR CURRENT POLITICAL ENDS

But no government officials turned up at the later event commemorating Jewish partisans and war veterans at the Jewish cemetery

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May 2015

Lithuanian Government’s New Jewish Heritage Commission Completes First Meeting

Sincere Efforts on Preserving Cemeteries and Mass Graves Reported; Real Progress Seen in Central Government Efforts to Overcome Local Resistance

But Painful Issues Ignored Include the Sinking Last Jewish Partisan Fort where Vilna Ghetto Survivors Defied the Nazis and their Collaborators; Humiliated Gravestones in Church Steps and School’s Garden Walls; State’s Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators

In Response to Several Commissioners’ Requests, Defending History Published List of Twelve Urgent Material Heritage Issues

Rumors in Vilnius on “PR Commission Replacement”: Defending History Campaign Challenging Red-Brown Commission Resulted in New, Commission “Replacing It” as Public Face of Gov.-Jewish Affairs; Red-Brown Commission’s Website Dark Since April 17^th, as Latest Slur on Holocaust Survivors Appears on Youtube

Press Release Mentions Politically Explosive Foreigners’ Demands for Changes in Citizenship and Private Property Restitution Laws

4 May 2015

On Eve of Commission Meeting, Protestant Clergyman Called for Rapid and Dignified Removal of Church Steps Made of Looted Jewish Gravestones at Central Vilnius Church (Pylimo St. 18); Commission Silent on Issue

Where the way into church is to trample on looted gravestones…

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3 May 2015

Rūta Vanagaitė, Lithuanian Author and Cultural Icon, Publishes Bold Article on History Education and Popular Antisemitism

Article followed her April 17 conference; Then, Vanagaitė teamed up with Jewish community’s Simon Gurevich to debate opponents on Lithuanian TV’s “The Naked Truth” on May 4. One of them was J. Panka, leader of annual neo-Nazi march in Kaunas that flaunts banner of a major Nazi collaborator.

Rūta Vanagaitė and Simon Gurevich on Lithuanian television’s “The Naked Truth” on May 4th.

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22 April 2015

Moment of Truth at Ponár

German Film Makers Release Clip from New Documentary:

Vilnius “Red-Brown Commission” Boss on Beloved Vilna Ghetto Survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, in Interview at Mass Murder Site Ponár (Paneriai)

ALSO MENTIONS IN BRIEF SOME CORE PRINCIPLES OF “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” AND HIS SEARCH FOR “ALL KINDS OF PERPETRATORS”

REACTION:

Efraim Zuroff says: “Do your country a favor and resign!”

Commission — officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes” — is a Lithuanian government sponsored unit with a record of irksome conflict.

Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja), who turns 93 next month, lost her entire family in the Holocaust. She is one of a number of Jewish partisan heroes publicly defamed by Lithuanian prosecutors for years. No charges were ever filed against any, and “investigations” were dropped in the face of international reaction. But in the absence of written apologies, defamation continues apace into the history books.

Other Holocaust survivors defamed include: Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Professor Pinchos Fridberg, Dr. Rachel Margolis, Attorney Joseph Melamed.

BUT IN SHOCK TO YIDDISH AND HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR CIRCLES, DIRECTOR OF N.Y. YIVO, FOUNDED IN VILNA 90 YEARS AGO, REMAINS A MEMBER OF THE COMMISSION, AND DEFENDS IT IN JEWISH MEDIA. OTHER FOREIGN JEWISH MEMBERS JOINED UP, AT TIMES UNDER POLITICAL PRESSURE. SOME HAVE RECEIVED PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS. A VILNA HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR APPEALED TO YIVO’S DIRECTOR IN VILNA YIDDISH (AUDIO).

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April 2015

Legacy of Rūta Vanagaitė’s April 2015 Conference at Vilnius City Hall

Tomas Venclova addresses conference at Vilnius City Hall on 17 April 2015. Photo: Julius Norwilla.

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CONFERENCE PAPERS, VIDEOS, PHOTOS AND MEDIA COVERAGE

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9 April 2015

Joseph Levinson, 98,

Dies in Vilnius

JOSEPH LEVINSON (1917-2015)

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20 March 2015

Attempts to “Fix” Holocaust History with Far Right’s “Double Genocide” Politics?

Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg dares challenge the state-sponsored “red-brown commission” that supports the Prague Declaration. His audio recording in Vilna Yiddish of an open letter to director of Yivo in NY. Text of full correspondence in English [DH] (+reprint [OLC]), Russian [Mi Zdes] (+ reprints in Shofar & Obzor), Yiddish [Forverts].

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European taxpayers’ money squandered by traveling exhibits to downgrade the Holocaust by mix-n-match with Soviet crimes? Geoff Vasil reviews exhibit.

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While a real Holocaust exhibit in Paris, for UNESCO, is vetoed by Latvia? Latest from Paris.

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Free thought in East European academia: Dissenters to “Double Genocide” dismissed, then accused of being non-academics? Coming soon: Prof. Michael Shafir’s “Deflection and Obfuscation.” Also: Times of Israel report.

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16 March 2015

In the East of EU-NATO-Land: Again, Latvian Authorities Grant Riga Old Town and its “Liberty Monument” on March 16th to 1500 Worshippers of Hitler’s Waffen SS Latvian Divisions

All Waffen SS members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler, some were recycled Holocaust killers. Lithuania’s far-right leaders J. Panka and R. Čekutis, fresh from neo-Nazi march in Vilnius, were on hand as honored guests; British neo-Nazis came for the event. For the second year in a row, the prime minister forbade ministers from attending. The antisemite who went around seeking Jewish observers to “enlighten” them (video).

Top left: Sea of flowers placed at Liberty Monument to honor Waffen SS. Top right: throng marches through historic old town. Bottom from left: heavy police presence; an antisemitic poster distributed by one of the event’s supporters.

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff leads a silent, peaceful protest of Just 2 (SWC and Defending History)

But his words at event are reported around the globe (including ABC News, Arutz Sheva, London Daily Mail, Der Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Yahoo News). SWC’s statement. Photo gallery by Delfi.lv.

Dr. Zuroff’s one-month odyssey took him to all four far-right or pro-Nazi events in the Baltics: Kaunas Feb 16, Tallinn Feb 24, Vilnius March 11, and Riga March 16.

Top: Dr. Efraim Zuroff is besieged by a throng of media. Bottom: He and Dovid Katz made for an on-site protest of just 2; Famous Latvian Jewish tour guide and genealogist Alex Feigmanis makes an appearance too.

Separate protest by “Latvia Without Nazism” was allowed after event’s conclusion, with members carrying symbolic fumigation gear to Liberty Monument after Waffen SS admirers’ departure. Monica Lowenberg’s international petition reaches 6700 mark.

Once the main event was over and the “Waffen SSers” had left, a small contingent from “Latvia Without Nazism” (affiliated with the controversial “World Without Nazism”) was allowed to protest. Led by the ever colorful Joe Koren (top), the group dressed as fumigation & disinfection specialists, with full gear and uniforms, to symbolically clear away the pro-Nazi residue of the marchers.

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ARCHIVES OF MONITORS: NEO-NAZI MARCHES IN THE REGION, 2008 to 2015

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12 March 2015

Latest Poster from “Zeppelinus” Who is Alleged to be High Official at Lithuania’s Economy Ministry

NEWEST EFFORT MOCKS LOVE OF COUNTRY BY ROMA, LEFTISTS, JEWS, BLACKS, POLES AND LGBT. SELECTION OF EARLIER PRODUCTIONS HERE. “FULL DISCLOSURE” — HE HAS ALSO DEDICATED MONTAGES TO DH EDITOR.

“Lithuania for Everyone. But where, then, is the country of the Lithuanians?” The signs read “I am Lithuania” with symbols interpolated, based on the actual sign (center) carried by head of the Union of Jewish Students at last Wednesday’s neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius.

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Will the “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” maintain its usual silence? Where are The Bagels?

The poster’s theme, mocking the inclusivist “Lithuania for Everybody [visiems]” (the common reply to the neo-Nazis’ “Lithuania for Lithuanians” [Lietuviams]) is taken from the courageous anti-Nazi demonstration by the head of the Union of Jewish Students in Lithuania at the city-center neo-Nazi event allowed by authorities on the nation’s independence day. See next story.

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11 March 2015

1,500 Neo-Nazis and Far-Right Extremists Again Given Vilnius’s Main Boulevard on Nation’s March 11th Independence Day; They Parade from Cathedral Square to Nation’s Parliament with Fascist Symbols and Chants of “Lietuva Lietuviams” (Lithuania for [Pure] Lithuanians)

STATEMENTS FROM PRECEDING DAYS; FOLLOWING THE EVENT: JEWISH COMMUNITY OF LITHUANIA’S STATEMENT AND REPORT; SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER; GEOFF VASIL IN DH

Section of the march gets underway at Vilnius’s Cathedral Square on the March 11th independence day event organized by neo-Nazi and far-right elements with state acquiescence.

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Flag with Swastika Hoisted Outside Nation’s Parliament for Over an Hour

Photo: Geoff Vasil

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For First Time, Leaders of Jewish Community, Including Chairperson Faina Kukliansky, and Jewish Student Union Come Out to Monitor and Protest the Vilnius March; Community Issues Statement; But No Sign of “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” or Bagels.

Amit Belaitė, president of Jewish Students’ Union boldly approaches far-right figure Ričardas Čekutis with sign that reads (in Lithuanian): “I am [star-of-david] Lithuania”. For years, Mr. Čekutis was a high official of the Genocide Center. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Continuing to flank the fascist spokesman (right), Ms. Belaitė is supported by Simas Levinas (left), head of the Jewish Religious Community of Lithuania. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff Leads Group of Seven Protesters in Partnership with Defending History; Part of Zuroff’s One Month Odyssey to All Four Baltic Neo-Nazi Events; SWC Statement; Photo galleries by Julius Norwilla and by Bill Pahl.

Left to right: Julius Norwilla, Markus Pollak, Dovid Katz, Simas Levinas, Pinchos Fridberg, Efraim Zuroff, Milan Chersonski. For a dozen years (1999-2011), Mr. Chersonski edited the Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

Three Down, One to Go, in Efraim Zuroff’s Odyssey to the Baltic Month of Neo-Nazi Marches: (1) Kaunas, 16 February: MONITORED; (2) Tallinn, 24 February: MONITORED; (3) Vilnius, 11 March: THE MAYOR? HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS? (4) Riga, 16 March: PETITION.

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Once again, thousands of fascists march past the “Jewish Public Library” and once again, not one member of staff came out to politely protest the glorification of fascism in a city whose 60,000 Jews were massacred. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Right-wing party politician Emanuelis Zingeris unexpectedly bumps into the SWC / Defending History crowd near the march. He was warm and chatty, but when invited to be photographed together with our team, says “Bye” and heads down Gedimino Boulevard via express. Photos: DefendingHistory.com. However, thanks to Julius Norwilla’s camera, the image of a cetain threesome was captured. SEE ALSO: Geoff Vasil’s take on the encounter.

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Scenes from the day….

Photomontage by DefendingHistory.com

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From the monitors…

Photomontage by DefendingHistory.com

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16 February 2015

Wiesenthal Center – Defending History Team of 12 Monitors & Protests Kaunas Independence Day Neo-Nazi March

Lithuanian Jewish Community Issues Statement on Feb. 20th

MARCH FEATURED LONG SERIES OF FASCIST-STYLE TAUNTS OF LIETUVA LIETUVIAMS (“LITHUANIA FOR [ETHNIC] LITHUANIANS”) ALONG WITH SWASTIKAS, OTHERFASCIST SYMBOLS AND A HUGE BANNER OF THE 1941 NAZI PUPPET PM WHO COLLABORATEDIN THE DESTRUCTION OF HIS CITY’S CITIZENS WHO WERE JEWISH. MAYOR’S OFFICE GAVE PERMITS FOR CITY CENTER TRAVESTY ON NATION’S INDEPENDENCE DAY.

ZERO PUBLIC REACTION FROM GOV. OFFICIALS OR DOMESTIC HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS. THE WIESENTHAL CENTER, DEFENDING HISTORY AND THE COUNTRY’S JEWISH COMMUNITY TO DATE THE ONLY PUBLIC VOICES.

Monitoring team was a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office in partnership with the Vilnius-based Defending History team.

Dozen protesters (vs. a march of up to 500) included five members of Lithuanian Jewish community (in private capacity), but no sign of any Bagels or other funded antisemitism (or human rights) monitors.

AFTER THE EVENT: JTA; Newsru.com; 15min.lt; Alfa.lt; Balsas.lt; Delfi.lt; Enlacejudío.com; EuropaUniversal; Faktai.lt; FB; Forward; ICEJ; Info.smi; Interfax; International Business Times; Israel Nachrichten; Jerusalem Post; JP (2); Jewish Community of Lithuania; Kauno diena; Lrt.lt; Lrytas.lt; Obzor; Newsru.co.il; News02elf; Radiojai.com.ar; RT; Shalom Life; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Strategic Culture Foundation; Times of Israel (French edition); Vilniaus diena; Ztis.cz.

RUN-UP TO THE EVENT: i24; Defending History (+ DH correspondence with mayor’s office; + SWC’s letter to the mayor).

PHOTO COLLECTIONS: Julius Norwilla; 15min.lt; Delfi.lt; Facebook; Kauno diena; Lrytas.lt; Vilniaus diena.

VIDEOS: Lrytas.tv; Lrt.lt.

NEO-NAZI & FAR-RIGHT REACTION: DavidDuke.com; Daily Slave.com; LDiena.lt; LtNacionalistas; Nationalist Youth Union; J. Panka; Stormfront; Vyrud.livejournal; Zeppelinus 1 + Zeppelinus 2 + Zeppelinus 3. But who is Zeppelinus?

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Images from the neo-Nazi march in the center of Kaunas on 6 February 2015

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10 February 2015

Baltic Nazi-Glorifying Marching Season Underway

COME JOIN US IN KAUNAS, MONDAY 16 FEB. at 1 PM (1300), AT RAMYBĖS PARK, TO MONITOR, SILENTLY PROTEST, & REMEMBER THE CITY’S MORE THAN 30,000 MURDERED JEWISH CITIZENS.

WIESENTHAL CENTER’S EFRAIM ZUROFF FLYING IN TO MONITOR EVENT AND LEAD PEACEFUL PROTEST; HIS LETTER TO KAUNAS MAYOR; OBZOR; DELFI.LT; KAUNO DIENA; ALKAS.LT

DH’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH KAUNAS MAYOR’S OFFICE. FOR THE RECORD:ISRAELI HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ LETTER OF 2013.

Presidents, Mayors, Cardinals, Professors, Editors —

“A splendid opportunity for Baltic leaders to just speak up”

Update: Efraim Zuroff’s op-ed on all four marches calls on Brussels to take a stand

CITY-CENTER NEO-NAZI MARCHES THAT GLORIFY WARTIME HITLER COLLABORATORS NOW SCHEDULED FOR ALL THREE BALTIC STATES; ESTONIAN & LITHUANIAN EVENTS ARE ON NATIONS’ INDEPENDENCE DAY HOLIDAYS

ESTONIA: TALLINN, FEBRUARY 24TH

LATVIA: RIGA, MARCH 16TH

LITHUANIA: KAUNAS, FEB. 16TH AND VILNIUS, MARCH 11TH

Eyewitness accounts of previous years’ marches

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3 February 2015

Sir Martin Gilbert

25 October 1936 — 3 February 2015

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MAGNIFICENT HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR, DEAR FRIEND, LOYAL AND UNDAUNTED CHAMPION OF HISTORIC TRUTH

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Martin Gilbert in Vilnius by DefendingHistory

Sir Martin Gilbert in Vilnius in 2009. Photo: DefendingHistory.com

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January 2015

Poetry Section is Launched with Work of Ken Slade (Kęstutis Sladkevičius) and Aleksandras Bosas

Historians Cite 2015 Relevance of the Seventy Years Declaration

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AUSCHWITZ LIBERATION 70TH ANNIVERSARY: Efraim Zuroff, Joshua Tartakovsky, and Pinchos Fridberg argue that Russia’s president should have been there. Dovid Katz calls for “Double Genocide” to be refuted head-on. Channel 4’s report.

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DR. ZUROFF’S ARTICLE IN (THE ORIGINAL) ENGLISH, GERMAN, AND RUSSIAN. PROF. FRIDBERG’S IN ENGLISH, GERMAN, AND (THE ORIGINAL) RUSSIAN.

EYEWITNESS REPORT ON THREE REMEMBRANCE DAY EVENTS IN VILNIUS; ON THE THIRD EVENT FEATURING GENOCIDE CENTER OFFICIAL; JERUSALEM POST & MAKOR RISHON REPORTS ON EFRAIM ZUROFF’S STATEMENT, NOW POSTED ON WIESENTHAL CENTER SITE. RESPONSE BY LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. COMMENT BY COMMUNITY’S CHAIRPERSON FAINA KUKLIANSKY.

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23 January 2015

Roundup

Croatia: Zuroff on church’s latest honors for Nazi collaborators; on the need for Brussels to respond to the latest events

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Lithuania: Will officials speak out against planned neo-Nazi and collaborator-glorifying events in Kaunas (Feb 16th) and Vilnius (March 11th)? After deputy foreign minister goes to Brussels to “fight antisemitism” Efraim Zuroff tweets, challenging him to denounce both neo-Nazi marches back home. Also: Melee on launch of Holocaust museum project miles from the city center

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Latvia: Will the government stop gifting the capital’s center for the March 16th celebrations of the country’s Waffen SS?

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USA: What happened to Rep. John Conyers’ amendment to the military appropriations bill? The incredible UN vote. Triumphant American tour of a documentary that glorifies a Nazi collaborator’s postwar activity without mentioning the “slight problem of 1941”…

Heat of Debate: Dan Lazare’s critique of Timothy Snyder’s alleged rubbishing of the anti-Nazi partisan resistance crops up in the “New Republic” fallout. Did the US State Dept. (via Vilnius embassy) pour money into SLS to influence the Holocaust history debates? On Poland & Ukraine: Gebert (2) and Katz in Jewish Review of Books. Have the Tides Foundation & George Soros been manipulated to support “rigged Holocaust discussions”?

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In DH: Genrich Agranovski, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Roland Binet, Frank Brendle, Milan Chersonski, Pinchos Fridberg, Sebastian Hager, Peter Jukes, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Jacob Piliansky, Tomas Venclova

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News & Views. Human Rights. Opinion. Books. Poetry. Museums. Media. More.

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21 January 2015

Freedom of Expression in France & at UNESCO

JTA: Latvia Vetoes UNESCO Holocaust Exhibit in Paris

Simon Wiesenthal Center critiques the Latvian Government’s sabotage of exhibition that was supposed to open this week in the French capital

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8 January 2015

President of the Czech Republic Breaks EU’s Wall of Silence on Ukrainian Gov’s Worship of Nazi-Era Fascists

Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic

“Unfortunately, I cannot congratulate Ukraine on such national heroes.”

— Milos Zeman, President of the Czech Republic

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More on Ukraine: Kiev center is scene of worshipful Bandera march on new year’s day; Jerusalem Post reports. Then, Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk explained that the “USSR invaded Germany and Ukraine” in World War II. Bryan Macdonald reports. William Blum in Foreign Policy Journal on US policy being “dumb and dumber”…

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1 January 2015

New Book Poses Question for US and EU Foreign Policy. Should the West not demand, as matter of ethics, values and history, the abandonment of allies’ state glorification of major Holocaust collaborators?

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22 November 2014

A Historic Low for US (and Canadian) Foreign Policy?

UN Resolution for “Combating Glorification of Nazism” Passes in General Assembly Committee (115 for, 3 against, with 55 abstentions)

Resolution, offered by Russia, seen as inherently flawed by Putinist machinations, Russia-Ukraine crisis & East-West feuding; EU abstains, as Baltic nationalists gloat (Delfi.lt)

STILL A SHOCK that three member states voted against: Ukraine, USA, Canada. Ukraine’s government recently made “heroes” of Nazi collaborators; catalogue of the last year.

The State Department’s idea of American moral leadership?

Text of the Resolution

Are unchecked Neo-Con politics behind the failure to Just Say No to the adulation of Nazi collaborators?

Media: Margaret Besheer in Voice of America; Joseph Brean in Canada’s National Post; Ken Hanly in Digital Journal; Dovid Katz in The Times of Israel; Ryan Maloney in Huffington Post; John Meinhold in In Serbia News; Jim Miles in CounterPunch; Boruch Shubert in JP Updates; Sam Sokol in the Jerusalem Post.

THE INCREDIBLE DOCUMENT

The Real Question: Should the US, UK, Canada, the EU and the rest of the free world not sponsor their own resolution combating the glorification of Nazism which is a real problem in the eastern EU and Ukraine?

TIME FOR THE UN TO LOOK AT THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION?

Related: Why did US Congressman John Conyers’ amendment restricting aid to pro-Nazi groups in Ukraine fail to pass? Max Blumenthal’s (unproven) allegations.

Glorification of Nazism section; Street names and gloried reburial in Lithuania; Issues in Croatia, Czech Rep, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine

Meanwhile, a citizen of Lithuania speaks out on memorials for Nazi collaborators and state-sanctioned parades that glorify Hitler collaborators on nation’s independence day

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20 November 2014

The Face of Roma in Vilnius

Does a Program of “Integration” Undermine the Roma Community in Lithuania’s Capital?

SPECIAL REPORT BY VILMA FIOKLA KIURĖ

Ruth Barnett (London) Responds

Related Defending History sections: Roma, Human Rights, Opinion

◊

Autumn 2014

Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) Relaunched for 2015

PROF. DANNY BEN-MOSHE LAUNCHES DECLARATION’S NEW WEBSITE ◊ RELAUNCH FOR JANUARY 2015 HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY ON 70th ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ ◊ NEED UNDERLINED BY THE BALTIC-NATIONALIST INSPIRED RESOLUTION SLIPPED INTO THE US CONGRESS LAST JUNE

SYD IN 15 LANGUAGES

Reports in JWire; JDU; SYD’s history in DH (a minister’s Hitler-Stalin moustache pronouncement; Vytenis Andriukaitis’s reply; Denis MacShane); Early media; in the film Rewriting History; In Dan Stone’s new book on postwar Europe; Facebook.

◊

October 2015

Defending History Brings Results…

For First Time, NY Yivo to Honor (on Dec. 17) a Holocaust Resistance Hero Defamed by Lithuania’s Prosecutors

Event is for NY Yivo fundraising, but no Yiddish text included

HOPES RISE FOR LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT PUBLIC APOLOGY TO DR. YITZHAK ARAD, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, HERO OF THE ANTI-NAZI RESISTANCE AND ISRAEL’S WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, MAJOR HOLOCAUST SCHOLAR AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF YAD VASHEM

Dr. Arad is a victim of a state-sponsored campaign of defamation. When forced by international outcry to abandon their “pre-trial investigation,” prosecutors published a further defamatory page on their own website. It’s still there!

Defamation remains widespread on Wikipedia, on the web, in “academic” books, and by the “Lithuanian Human Rights [!] Association” (LHRA). Public apology in writing seen as only remedy.

What does Yitzhak Arad think about the “red-brown commission” and the Prague Declaration?

Hopes rising Yivo director will quit the “red-brown commission” which Yitzhak Arad exposed in Defending History as a major engine of the Double Genocide movement in Europe and beyond. Yivo membership in the Commission is seen as a betrayal of Holocaust survivors and support for Prague Declaration (which is publicly supported by the commission). See Seventy Years Declaration for response.

WHEN WILL DR. RACHEL MARGOLIS BE HONORED?

צי האָט דער איצטיקער ניו⸗יאָרקער ייוואָ אינגאַנצן אַרויסגעוואָרפן יידיש פון דער היינטצייטיקער טעטיקייט? וואָס וואָלטן דערויף געזאָגט דינה אַבראַמאָוויטש, אוריאל וויינרייך, מאַקס וויינרייך, יודל מאַרק, חנה מלאָטעק, שלמה נאָבל, נחום סטוטשקאָוו, אברהם סוצקעווער, נח פּרילוצקי, זעליג⸗הירש קלמנאָוויטש, זלמן רייזען, צמח שאַבאַד, מרדכי שעכטער?

◊

Five Holocaust survivors, and the year the campaign against each was launched by government units in Lithuania. From left to right: Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Dr. Rachel Margolis, Ms. Fania Brantsovsky, attorney Joseph Melamed, and physicist Professor Pinchos Fridberg. Many bold Lithuanian citizens have stood up to state-sponsored efforts to obfuscate the Holocaust via revisionist historiography.

◊

August 2015

Latvian for “Springtime for Hitler”?

Riga Jewish Heritage Guide Aleks Feigmanis and Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff Blast New Musical that Glorifies a Holocaust Perpetrator; Associated Press Reports

THE SHOW’S NATIONAL TOUR STARTED ON OCTOBER 11

◊

NEW YORK, 19 October 2014

“Klinghoffer” — A Dangerous Pattern of Abuse of Drama to Downgrade Murder and Genocide?

Glorification of the local perpetrators of the Holocaust is a problem in many of the pro-Western countries of Eastern Europe

◊

KIEV, 14 October 2014

Ukrainian Parliament’s Debate on Glorifying World War II Hitlerist Nationalists Ends in Disarray

But “Centrist” President Poroshenko Proclaims Day of Fascist Group’s Founding as National Holiday

Mainstream Western Media Mostly Ignores the News (but see: Sunday Times)

In a September tweet, Ukraine’s president said UPA fighters were an “example of heroism.” It was a prelude to the scheduled Oct. 14th debate in parliament on declaring Hitler’s executioners in Ukraine to be “freedom fighters.” When violence broke out on the 14th outside the national parliament, the Western media, including the BBC, whitewashed the Hitler-era Holocaust perpetrators being glorified by Ukraine’s nationalist leaders.

But the UPA, OUN and the Banderists were pro-Nazi, racist, antisemitic militias infamous for mass murders of civilians during the Holocaust. See: Yad Vashem. Yitzhak Arad. John-Paul Himka. Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe. Per Anders Rudling.

Presumably, nobody forced Ukraine’s president in 2014 to tweet on “that matter of history” from over 70 years ago? He came out with even worse at a press conference, before going on to proclaim a national independence holiday based on the fascist UPA’s sacred date.

RELATED COVERAGE: Foreign Policy, Guardian, International Business Times, London Jewish Chronicle, The Nation (II), NBC News, Telegraph, The Hill, Washington Post, ZDF

BACKGROUND HERE

DELRAY, FLORIDA, October 2014

Screening of Bloom’s “Defending Holocaust History” Elicits Spirited Discussion

Now Available on YouTube

◊

VILNIUS, 16 May 2014

Seven Lithuanian Champions of Human Rights Awarded First Annual

James Tissot’s The Prophet Amos (around 1888)

PROPHET AMOS AWARD FOR COURAGE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

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October 2014

Daniel Lazare Deconstructs Timothy Snyder’s Trashing of Anti-Nazi World War II Partisans, and New Role as Point Man for (East European) Far Right and (US) Neo-Cons

PLUS: CAN YOU RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH A PROFESSOR FROM YALE?

———

6 September 2014

Five Years

Five years have elapsed since this journal was founded on 6 Sept. 2009, in memory of Professor Meir Shub (1924-2009). Outside coverage includes David Hirsch in Engage and Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha, Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, Mark Ames in The Nation, and Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger and Peter Jukes in Motley Moose (2011); Danny Ben-Moshe in his film Rewriting History (2012); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Richard Bloom in his film Defending Holocaust History (2014). CONTINUE READING

PLEASE DONATE TO HELP DEFENDING HISTORY CONTINUE TO DEFEND HISTORY — AND TO PAY OUR AUTHORS IN EASTERN EUROPE FOR THEIR WORK…

———

2 September 2014

The Defending History Community Celebrates the 77th Birthday of

Vilnius author (in Russian), editor (in English, Lithuanian, Russian, Yiddish), historian (European), theatre director (Yiddish) and tireless, fearless (global) intellectual champion in the struggle against the far right’s Holocaust revisionism, racism and antisemitism

MILAN CHERSONSKI

77

A pillar of strength in the Jewish Community of Lithuania and far beyond

Selections from his years as editor of the quadrilingual Jerusalem of Lithuania. Chersonski section in Defending History. Film tribute. Facebook.

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LONDON, 26 August 2014

Ernst Lowenberg (1922—2014)

Ernst Josef Lowenberg

(28 December 1922 — 26 August 2014)

◊

In his final months, London Holocaust survivor Ernst Lowenberg, a native of Halle am Saale in Germany, wrote to UK prime minister David Cameron asking the government to take a stand on East European Holocaust revisionism.

In 2012, on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, he led a peaceful, dignified, friendly picket-line outside the Lithuanian Embassy in London and handed the consul a petition.

He is pictured above at the prime minister’s Holocaust Commission consultation event held in London on 5 May 2014.

Funeral service Tuesday, 2 Sept. 2014 at 2 PM at West Chapel, Hoop Lane, Golders Green, London NW11

———

Summer 2014

Seventy Years Declaration Now Open to Public

Text ◊ 15 European languages ◊ History ◊ Origins ◊ As Counter Prague 2008

———

Summer 2014

ISSUES IN THE NEWS

(I) Freedom of Speech

Estonia ♦ Hungary ♦ Latvia ♦ Lithuania (Balčiūnas; Beržinis; Butkus; Dyukov; Fridberg; Grabauskas; Melamed)

COMING SOON: Review of the Lithuanian edition of a book on the Holocaust that got its author banned from attending the book launch event

(II) Glorifying Nazi Collaborators

Croatia ♦ Estonia ♦ Hungary ♦ Latvia ♦ Lithuania ♦ Ukraine

◊

August 2014

Ukrainian Government’s Use of Neo-Nazi Paramilitaries is Reported by London’s Daily Telegraph

———

“But Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries […] should send a shiver down Europe’s spine. Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or antisemites.” — Tom Parfitt in the Daily Telegraph.

Azov Unit fighting for Ukraine’s government. Photo: Tom Parfitt (Telegraph)

BUT USE OF PRO-HITLER ELEMENTS BY WASHINGTON’S ALLY GETS ONE SENTENCE AT END OF NEW YORK TIMES REPORT

Western Media Begins to Cover the Far Right and Nazi-Worshiping Aspects; See also Ukraine Section; Page; 2014 Media Page.

◊

Plungyán (Plungė), 30 July 2014

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (Jakovas Bunka), Famed Wood Sculptor, Last Jew of Plungyán (Plungė, Lithuania), Dies at 91

His Art Commemorates the Holocaust in Western Lithuania

Was World War II Red Army Veteran of the War Against Hitler

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (13 July 1923 – 30 July 2014) Photo: Adam Ellick

2011 VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH YANKL-YOSL BUNK IN PLUNGYÁN

Bunk’s sculptures; his memoir of Jewish Plungyán; JewishGen Kehila links; Adam Ellick on Bunk; JTA; Bunk’s list of the Jews of Plungyán; “hypothetical” speech at the 2011 Plungyán commemoration.

Bunk’s massive wooden sculpture at the forest hill spot (Plungyán/Plungė, western Lithuania), where 74 teenage Jewish girls (from the local high school) were murdered by locals who knew them. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Summer 2014

WELCOME TO DEFENDING HISTORY (FROM THE NEWEST BRAND OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL)

When Citizens of Lithuania Speak Out Boldly

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New Latvian Musical, “Sugar Herbert Sugar” Glorifies Holocaust Mass Murderer Herberts Cukurs

Tickets now available online for performances around the country. About the show. Signature tune released on YouTube (Would they have done better with the old Archies version of “Sugar Sugar”?)

Are we back to Springtime for Hitler, just focused on celebrating a local mass murderer of Latvian Jewry? Will the hosting venues, including the City Cultural Centers in Jelgava and Valmiera, and prestigious halls in Riga, Liepāja, Rēzekne and Ventspils also be holding memorials for their citizens murdered in the Latvian Holocaust in which Herberts Cukurs, known as the “Hangman of Riga,” took such a personal and violent part?

———

Meanwhile…

Latvian Constitutional Court Upholds “Double Genocide” Restriction on Free Speech; Five Years Max

Surpasses Lithuanian law (up to two years imprisonment) and Hungary’s version (up to three years)

Opinion that there was one genocide in the country (the Holocaust) remains criminalized by 2014 law, in the spirit of the laws passed in Hungary and Lithuania in 2010

Comment on Eastern EU speech laws by: Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff; See also: FREE SPEECH Section

QUESTION: Does the new musical Sugar Herbert Sugar perhaps violate the new law which bans (with punishment up to five years jailtime) “glorification, denial, justification or gross derogation of genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace or war crimes against Latvia perpetrated by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.” Or is the law null and void when it comes to the Holocaust in Latvia?

LATVIA SECTION

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Summer 2014

Is a Vilnius Police Unit Again Harassing Evaldas Balčiūnas for his Articles on the Holocaust?

LATEST NEWS. EARLIER REPORT. BALČIŪNAS SECTION.

FREE SPEECH SECTION

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Evaldas Balčiūnas (left) joined Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office, last February in Kaunas, Lithuania, for a small, silent, peaceful protest against the state-approved neo-Nazi march in the city’s center on the nation’s independence day.

◊

June 2014

Did Someone Sneak Some Holocaust Revisionism into the US Congress?

Under the Radar: Did East European nationalists — trying to insinuate the “Two Holocausts Theory” into the West — slip a resolution right onto Capitol Hill?

Flying in from the east?

Hurtful Shock for Veterans, Holocaust Survivors & their Families: US Congress Approves Mixed Soviet-Nazi Commemoration Day in Line with 2008 “Prague Declaration” (Text)

RESPONSES:

Clemens Heni; Dovid Katz

BALTIC NATIONALIST GROUPS PRESSED FOR THE RESOLUTION; GOVTRACK; IT WAS ATTACHED TO THE MILITARY APPROPRIATIONS BILL (SEE AMENDMENT 134 / 1266); FULL TEXT; LITHUANIAN AMBASSADOR IN WASHINGTON CONFIRMS CURRENT POLITICAL AIM OF (DE FACTO) REVISION OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY.

SAME GROUPS THAT HAVE SUPPORTED PROJECTS TO HONOR NAZI COLLABORATORS?

But what’s wrong with a single “red-brown” remembrance day?

YITZHAK ARAD

YEHUDA BAUER

ABRAHAM COOPER

EFRAIM ZUROFF

SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION

THE HOLOCAUST IS IN EFFECT DOWNGRADED TO ONE OF TWO SUPPOSEDLY “EQUAL HOLOCAUSTS”; See: Yitzhak Arad, Yehuda Bauer, Danny Ben-Moshe, Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Esther Goldberg Gilbert, Dovid Katz, Rachel Kostanian, Denis MacShane, John Mann, Efraim Zuroff

♦

Are US officials aware that the Prague Declaration is the foundational document of the ultranationalists’ “Double Genocide” campaign to revise Holocaust history? Of the Seventy Years Declaration (2012) response? Do these members of Congress really believe that those who liberated Auschwitz are morally identical to its killers?

FILMS: Danny Ben-Moshe’s Rewriting History; Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust History; Gerit Ziegler’s When Double Genocide Means Single Genocide

BATTLE OF EUROPEAN DECLARATIONS: Seventy Years Declaration (2012) is a reply to the Prague Declaration (2008); Statement of the World Union of Progressive Judaism (2013); of the British Board of Deputies; History of SYD (to 2014)

Double Genocide section; Blaming the Victims; Glorification of Collaborators; 2012 reburial of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister; Sample of the antisemitic essence of Double Genocide (by current official at the Economy Ministry)

Freedom of Speech in the Eastern EU?

ŠIAULIAI, 22 MAY 2014

DH Staff Writer Evaldas Balčiūnas is Investigated by Lithuanian Police

Summons Issued

He is author of a series of bold articles about state sanitization and glorification of Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators

Newest investigation follows recent police and prosecutorial harassment of Giedrius Grabauskas and Saulius Beržinis

PATTERN OF CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST? PROSECUTORS ON YITZHAK ARAD (2007); HARASSMENT OF VILNA GHETTO SURVIVORS (2008); 2 YEAR JAIL LAW (2010); POLICE PURSUIT OF JOSEPH MELAMED (2011); RED-BROWN COMMISSION’S DEFAMATION OF PINCHOS FRIDBERG (2013-14); SUMMARY OF STATE DEFAMATION OF SURVIVORS (2008-2014); GIEDRIUS GRABAUSKAS (2014); SAULIUS BERŽINIS (2014); EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS (2014).

Evaldas Balčiūnas

♦

RELATED: Defending History report on Lithuania’s 2010 law. Essays by: Leonidas Donskis; Milan Chersonski. Section on Democracy in the Eastern EU.

RELATED: Police action against feminists who stood up peacefully to the neo-Nazis in Lithuania.

“We stand with Evaldas 100%.”

—Editor

With Efraim Zuroff

On February 16th 2014, Evaldas Balčiūnas joined the small, peaceful and silent protest led by Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office, on the occasion of the annual neo-Nazi march in Kaunas which again glorified the city’s 1941 Nazi puppet ruler who collaborated in sending his city’s 30,000 Jewish citizens to their deaths.

♦

PRAGUE, 20 MAY 2014

European Union

“Double Genociders” in Prague Triumphantly Announce Participation of “Cabinet of Viviane Reding” at 12-13 June Conference on “Legacy of Totalitarianism Today”…

Will EU’s Commissioner for Justice legitimize the Prague campaign to obfuscate the Holocaust for the East-European-nationalist inspired rewrite of history?

Will there be a single paper on current glorification of Nazi collaborators in a conference on “Legacy of Totalitarianism Today”?

♦

BACKGROUND:

THE PRAGUE DECLARATION (2008); SYD (2012)

THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION (1998-2014)

DOUBLE GENOCIDE

STATE GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS

DOES DOUBLE GENOCIDE “NEED” TO TARGET HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS?

♦

The “Prague Platform” organizing the conference features on its home page the Prague Declaration and partnership with (inter alia) the Vilnius based Genocide Center and the “red-brown” commission. Also: Is EU funding squandered on rampant infighting?

LONDON, 9 May 2014

Appeal to Prime Minister David Cameron

Survivor Calls on Prime Minister to Reject “Double Genocide” Revisionism

Ernst Lowenberg, 91, pictured at the May 2014 UK consultation with Holocaust survivors, has written to David Cameron calling for rejection of the “Double Genocide” revisionism emanating from Eastern Europe. In 2012, he handed a petition to the Lithuanian embassy in London.

UK PAGE UK SECTION

VILNIUS, 16 May 2014

Genrich Agranovski on the Fate of the Old Jewish Gravestones of Vilna

Confirms rumors about the steps outside the Contemporary Arts Center on Vokiečių Street

♦

Related: Jewish gravestones (matséyves) in the decorative walls of Lazdynai; on steps of the Reformed Evangelical Church on Pylimo; Blood libel plaque in the Bernardinai Catholic Church

◊

Spring 2014

UKRAINE: BIG PART OF STORY IS TABOO FOR MAIN WESTERN MEDIA, BUT WHY?

Putin’s indefensible actions are robustly exposed. But there is reluctance to look critically at “pro-Western” forces that glorify (as “national heroes”) Nazi collaborators and Holocaust mass murderers…

What’s Western about that?

HISTORY FOR SALE? AS EVENTS UNFOLD, ARE WESTERN GOVERNMENTS TACITLY HELPING TO “FIX” THE HOLOCAUST BARBARITY OF BANDERA, THE UPA AND THE OUN? THESE GROUPS MURDERED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS (UKRAINIAN CITIZENS) ON AN ETHNIC BASIS IN THE CAUSE OF HITLERIST RACIAL ELIMINATION.

WESTERN VALUES? IS IT MORAL FOR THE US, NATO AND THE EU TO COVER FOR THE ELEVATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS TO NATIONAL HERO STATUS? CAN STATE-SANCTIONED NAZI-WORSHIP REALLY BE IRRELEVANT TO TODAY’S RACISM, ANTISEMITISM & HOMOPHOBIA?

HISTORIANS FOR HIRE? ARE BIG (AND SMALL) GUN HISTORIANS ALREADY BEING MOBILIZED TO OBFUSCATE THE ISSUES AND SANITIZE THE MASS MURDERERS OF UKRAINIAN JEWRY? TO PROMOTE MORE “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” REVISIONISM? ALLIES’ DEFEAT OF HITLER AT HUGE SACRIFICE IS INCREASINGLY MARGINALIZED BY THE REVISIONISTS.

Huge banner in Independence Square in Kiev glorifies wartime fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose Hitlerist organization murdered tens of thousands of civilians — citizens of Ukraine — on an ethnic basis. Photo: Washington Post. Earlier, BBC News published images of the Bandera banner gracing Kiev City Hall.

American values?! Svoboda party chief Oleh Tyahnybok. With his soul-mates, and “legitimized” by US Senator John McCain. . . On Svoboda see UCSJ; SWC; Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe; Per Anders Rudling; report in the The Nation.

BUT SOME HAVE HAD THE COURAGE TO GO AGAINST THE TIDE…

♦ See articles in Foreign Policy, BBC Newsnight, LA Times, Tablet, Huffington Post, International Business Times, Reuters and MORE.
♦ Ukraine section (also: On Bandera).
♦ In Defending History: Franziska Bruder, Eleonora Groisman, Jared McBride, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Per Anders Rudling (see also Dr. Rudling’s other papers).
♦ Major museum in Lviv; Was Canadian PM manipulated?
♦ Are geostrategic concerns morally blinding some Western powers to East European adulation for Hitler’s allies (and their values) Issues for Canada, EU, UK, US (and Israel).

REVISIONISM IN THE MAKING: PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE AT THE LONSKY MUSEUM IN LVIV

SEE ARTICLE BY DR. PER ANDERS RUDLING

♦

Spring 2014

Five Holocaust Survivors Still Wait for Apologies after Years of State-Sponsored Defamation

Four of them, in their late 80s or 90s, are heroic veterans of the anti-Nazi war effort who escaped the Vilna, Kovno or Svintsyán Ghetto to join up with the partisans in the forests of Lithuania. All their families perished in the Lithuanian Holocaust.

♦

SURVIVORS PROGRESSIVELY DEFAMED FOR POSTERITY, FROM 2006 ONWARD, BY STATE-SPONSORED AGENCIES

“ONE PUBLIC LETTER OF APOLOGY COULD REPAIR MUCH OF THE DAMAGE”

ITEM NO. 1 IN LONDON BASED INTERNATIONAL PETITION

THE SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT THEMSELVES: YITZHAK ARAD; FANIA BRANTSOVSKY; PINCHOS FRIDBERG; SARA GINAITE; RACHEL MARGOLIS (2); JOE MELAMED

COMMENT BY: SHIMON ALPEROVICH & TUVIA JAFET (2); CHEN IVRI APTER; DANNY BEN-MOSHE; GORDON BROWN; MILAN CHERSONSKI; LEONIDAS DONSKIS; THE ECONOMIST; ABRAHAM FOXMAN; ESTHER GOLDBERG (GILBERT); SIR MARTIN GILBERT; DOV LEVIN; DENIS MACSHANE; YOSSI MELMAN (2); UK PARLIAMENT EARLY DAY MOTION; UNITED STATES CONGRESSMEN 1 & 2; VALDAS VASILIAUSKAS; EFRAIM ZUROFF

“STILL TIME TO END THINGS WITH THE LAST SURVIVORS ON A NICER NOTE, AFTER 700 YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY IN LITHUANIA“

FILM: REWRITING HISTORY; DEFENDING HOLOCAUST HISTORY; LIZA RUFT

MEDIA COVERAGE (SELECTION): Dana Gloger in the Jewish Chronicle (2008); Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds (2008): Raphael Ahren in Haaretz (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha (2009); Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post (2010); Esther Goldberg in Canadian Jewish News (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger (2010); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Daniel Brook, coming soon (2014).

◊

8 April 2014

April 2014 International Romani Day

ROMA SECTION

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė looks at Roma issues in Lithuania: Roma: Presumption of Guilt

31 March 2014

Criminalization of History in the Eastern EU?

Is a police crime unit the appropriate authority for investigating EU/NATO citizens of 2014 who oppose state glorification of alleged Nazi collaborators of 1941?

Vilnius Police Crime Unit Harassing Holocaust Researcher and Film Maker Saulius Beržinis

Beržinis is one of many bold Lithuanian citizens who have spoken up

PATTERN OF CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST? PROSECUTORS ON YITZHAK ARAD (2007); HARASSMENT OF VILNA GHETTO SURVIVORS (2008); 2 YEAR JAIL LAW (2010); POLICE PURSUIT OF JOSEPH MELAMED (2011), GIEDRIUS GRABAUSKAS (2014), SAULIUS BERŽINIS (2014)

◊

27 March 2014

Dr. Shimon Alperovich

11 Oct. 1928 — 27 March 2014

REPORT HERE

SHIMON ALPEROVICH SECTION IN DEFENDING HISTORY

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23 March 2014

British Board of Deputies Calls for European Parliament to Reject Prague Declaration’s Holocaust Downgrade

Move follows statement by the World Union for Progressive Judaism. More on Prague Declaration. Responses include: SYD, Rewriting History and other films.

What’s wrong with Double Genocide? Shimon Alperovich, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Yitzhak Arad, Evaldas Balciunas, Yehuda Bauer, Danny Ben-Moshe, Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Pinchos Fridberg, Esther Goldberg Gilbert, Dovid Katz, Rachel Kostanian, Denis MacShane, John Mann, Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas), Efraim Zuroff

◊

18 March 2014

More Holocaust Revisionism in “Prague Declaration Europe”?

Vilnius Constitutional Court: “Double Genocide” via New Attempt to Inflate Definition of the G-Word?

THE NEW DOCUMENT; REPORT; SEE ALSO STATE “GENOCIDE CENTER” AND ITS “HOLOCAUST ENVY”…

Move comes four years after parliament passed a law effectively criminalizing the opinion that there was one Holocaust in the country

On Double Genocide see:

ARTICLES: Shimon Alperovich, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Yitzhak Arad, Evaldas Balciunas, Yehuda Bauer, Danny Ben-Moshe, Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Pinchos Fridberg, Esther Goldberg Gilbert, Dovid Katz, Rachel Kostanian, Denis MacShane, John Mann, Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas), Efraim Zuroff

FILMS: Danny Ben-Moshe’s Rewriting History; Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust History; Gerit Ziegler’s When Double Genocide Means Single Genocide

BATTLE OF EUROPEAN DECLARATIONS: Seventy Years Declaration (2012) is a reply to the Prague Declaration (2008); Statement of the World Union of Progressive Judaism (2013); History of SYD (to 2014)

Double Genocide section; Blaming the Victims; Glorification of Collaborators; 2012 reburial of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister; Sample of the antisemitic essence of Double Genocide (by current official at the Economy Ministry)

DOUBLE GENOCIDE IN THE ANTISEMITIC IMAGINATION:

: “Thank you for our victory,” says the swarmy Jew to the Soviet soldier as the city burns and a raped blonde lies dead. Courtesy of “Zeppelinus” who allegedly still works in the Economy Ministry.

DOUBLE GENOCIDE TOURISM:

Survey; Genocide Center; Genocide Museum; Gruto Parkas; Tolerance Center; Street names and university shrines for Nazi collaborators

◊

February-March 2014

Baltic Marching Season

Interface of Pro-Fascist Marches, Holocaust Revisionism, and Contemporary Racism

EFRAIM ZUROFF IN THE HUFFINGTON POST, JERUSALEM POST AND TABLET

Defending History, in harmony with the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, monitored the three 2014 Nazi-ally glorifying marches in the Baltics. Authorities invested shrewdly this year in downplaying all three, but failed to simply move them away from prestigious city centers (which would have offended the far right and ultranationalist base). Visible fascist symbols were reduced from previous years, local opposition sometimes neutralized, and media interest discouraged.

Kaunas on February 16th

Vilnius on March 11th

Riga on March 16th

But the noxious worship, in 2014’s EU, of Hitler’s allies in Holocaust-era Europe (now being cast as implicitly “acceptable”) remains a shameful constant, one that calls out for urgent scrutiny in the West. Yet again, Defending History is defense of today’s — and tomorrow’s — human rights and EU/NATO values. The adulaters of wartime Hitlerism are its moral heirs: today’s propagaters of racism, ultranationalism, antisemitism, homophobia and Aryanist theories of national purity.

◊

27 February 2014

Prague’s Double Genocide “Platform” is Broken

ITS “CONSTITUTION” IS THE HOLOCAUST-REVISIONIST “PRAGUE DECLARATION”

The “Platform”; the Orwellian “Reconciliation” of histories; What is Double Genocide? DH’s section; What’s it all about?

A EUROPEAN RESPONSE: THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION (SYD)

◊

February 2014

New (and unconfirmed) report from Vilnius

STILL NO DENIALS FROM POLICE OR PROSECUTORS ON AUTHENTICITY OF FEB. 2014 DOCUMENT CIRCULATING

IS A 2014 EU POLICE FORCE HARASSING A CITIZEN FOR A 2013 ARTICLE ABOUT ALLEGED 1941 LOCAL HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS?

New (and confirmed) report from Vilnius

ONE YEAR LATER:

Vilnius Holocaust Survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg is Still Defamed on State-Sponsored Commission Website

BACKGROUND ON THE AFFAIR; ON THE COMMISSION

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27 January 2014

Hungarian Medal Returned

Randolph Braham, 91, Survivor and Major Holocaust Scholar, Returns Medal to Hungarian Government over “Whitewashing” of Holocaust

Reports in New York Times & Guardian; Braham’s Open Letter

Is Hungarian Government Abusing Good Will of Congressman Tom Lantos’s Widow?

Focus shifting to recipients of Lithuanian state honors after gov. glorification of Nazi collaborators by reburials, street names, Kaunas univ. shrine, marches, events & campaign against Holocaust survivors

Honoring a Hero of the Anti-Nazi Resistance in Rechovot

Dr. Rachel Margolis, 92, Honored on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Rachel Margolis, 92, is honored at her home in Rechovot on 27 January by Brig. Gen. Zvi Kan-Tor (center), head of the task force establishing Museum of the Jewish Soldier of World War II and Abraham Grinzaid, head of Israel’s association of Soviet army veterans who fought against the Nazis.

WHO IS RACHEL MARGOLIS? GORDON BROWN SPEAKS OUTEvaldas Balčiūnas

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Person of the Year 2014

Posted on 24 January 2014 by Defending History

Professor Pinchos Fridberg, a Vilnius Holocaust Survivor, Stands Up to Powerful Forces with Singular Courage

The debate in English translation ◊ Danny Ben-Moshe in Jerusalem Report ◊ Which government commission continues to defame this Holocaust survivor? ◊ Appeal to commissioners ◊ DH’s Pinchos Fridberg section

Memory Lane in PDFs . . .

2008: Dana Gloger in the Jewish Chronicle; Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds; 2009: Raphael Ahren in Haaretz; Avi Friedman in Mishpacha; 2010: Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post; Esther Goldberg in Canadian Jewish News; Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger; 2011: Dovid Katz in JHC; 2012: Efraim Zuroff in Haaretz; Dovid Katz in London Jewish News; 2013: Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report

NEARLY A YEAR LATER, STILL NO APOLOGY!

Red-Brown Commission Continues to Call one of the Last Vilna Holocaust Survivors a “Liar” on its own Website ♦ Background

Is Commission out of commission?

NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM RELEASED

Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust History, a new documentary on “Double Genocide” Holocaust revisionism, focusing on Lithuania and Latvia, was released this month by Richard Bloom Productions.

Defending History Brings Real (But Not Enough) Results…

After 7 Years of Silence, Part of Lithuanian Government’s “Red-Brown Commission” Expresses “Sorrow and Anger” at “Unwarranted Attacks” on Yitzhak Arad

Yitzhak Arad

First Real Gesture Brings Praise; But No Mention of Prosecutors’ “Kangaroo War Crimes Investigation” or Urgent Need for Apology from Prosecutor and Political Leaders to Halt Ongoing Defamation of Dr. Arad — a Holocaust Survivor, Resistance Hero in the Struggle against Nazism, Veteran of Israel’s War of Independence and then General, Major Scholar of the Holocaust, Head of Yad Vashem for Over Two Decades (1972-1993)

His The Holocaust in the Soviet Union is a (2010) National Jewish Book Award winner

BACKGROUND

OUT OF COMMISSION?

PDF OF THE LETTER (dated 14 Oct; see our 11 Oct open l etter appealing to commissioners’ conscience); Letter signed by all members except A. Bubnys, J. Brent, N. Naimark, J. Rainer, T. Snyder, F. Thom

Commission announces two separate sub-commissions, as in 1998 (PDF). Comment by Milan Chersonski (2008); by Rachel Kostanian (2013)

COMMISSION APPEARS TO BE HOPELESSLY SPLIT: AMONG THOSE WHO DID NOT SIGN IS THE COMMISSION’S REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE GENOCIDE CENTER (WHERE THE “INVESTIGATION” OF DR. ARAD WAS STARTED AND NEVER DISOWNED). HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS DISMAYED AT ATTEMPTED LEGITIMIZATION OF THE ANTISEMITIC GENOCIDE CENTER.

Ongoing defamation extends to prosecutors’ website, Wikipedia, new publications, and mass media; souvenir envelope on sale for years at Vilnius’s main post office; even a “human rights association”

No mention of other defamed Holocaust survivors, including Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Tel Aviv attorney Joseph Melamed, Dr. Rachel Margolis; Professor Pinchos Fridberg who continues to be defamed on the commission’s own website

YITZHAK ARAD’S 2012 PAPER ON HOLOCAUST OBFUSCATION AND THE PART PLAYED BY VILNIUS-BASED COMMISSION

No mention of the Prague Declaration that continues to feature on commission’s website as “truth” while Seventy Years Declaration is unmentioned; Eight courageous Lithuanian parliamentarians signed SYD, defying the commission; MP Andriukaitis’s bold 2012 reply to a right-wing minister’s broadside

RELATED: section on the commission; page; Holocaust survivors from Lithuania protest commission’s renewal in Israel and the US; Joe Melamed’s letter; Pinchos Fridberg section

Are (right-wing) politicians running the show? Image: International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania

RESIGNATIONS TO DATE FROM THE COMMISSION AND ASSOCIATED BODIES:

Sir Martin Gilbert and professors Gershon Greenberg, Konrad Kwiet, and Dov Levin

Efraim Zuroff Slams New Attempt by Vilnius Genocide Center to Massage the Numbers — and Ethics — of the Local Perpetrators

MAARIV REPORTS

Evaldas Balčiūnas: A tale of inspiring courage in challenging the Genocide Center

Background: Page on Genocide Center and its texts in Genocide Museum and Gruto Parkas

Related: Chersonski replies to Aleksandravičius

Red-Brown Exhibit Opened in Berlin

REVIEW OF ITS RECENT STINT IN VILNIUS

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 PARUSH

RIGHT WING POLITICS IN PLAY AT BERLIN VILNA GHETTO CONFERENCE: The event is hosted by a Conservative Party (Christian Democratic Union) linked foundation that is itself part of the Centre for European Studies, a think tank affiliated with the right wing EPP that is itself an engine of red-brown Double Genocide politics in Europe. Chief of red-brown commission in town for the event.

QUESTION: Will there be any mention of the ghetto survivors defamed for posterity (in the absence of formal apologies) by branches of the Lithuanian government? The other painful issues including Double Genocide? Dr. Rachel Margolis rediscovered and published the diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz. More.

TRIBUTES ON FACEBOOK: RACHEL MARGOLIS’S BIRTHDAY

Rachel Margolis with Joseph Melamed (Oct 28th 2011 in Rehovot)

Dr. Rachel Margolis at her home in Rehovot, Israel, visited by Joseph Melamed, president of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, who was himself visited by agents of Interpol in 2011 on instructions from Lithuanian prosecutors.

Friends in Berlin may consider politely asking officials for official public apologies to the defamed Holocaust survivors, including:

Dr. Yitzhak Arad

Ms. Fania Brantsovsky

Professor Pinchos Fridberg

Dr. Rachel Margolis

Attorney Joseph Melamed

For summaries of some painful issues that need to be addressed in pursuit of reconciliation and mutual understanding, please see Monica Lowenberg’s petition, and Defending History’s proposed solutions.

Quote of the Month

BRITISH MP JOHN MANN

“It is an industrial rewriting of history in Eastern Europe to excuse mass murders carried out on behalf of the Nazis.”

— UK MP John Mann, October 2013

An Appeal to Conscience

of the German, Israeli and US members of the renewed state-financed “Red-Brown Commission”:

ARE YOU REALLY COMFORTABLE WITH THE COMMISSION’S

(1) continued public support for the 2008 Prague Declaration, and continued failure to mention the existence of the Seventy Years Declaration? (background)

(2) continued defamation of beloved Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg? (background)

(3) continued failure to publicly condemn the antisemitic prosecutorial defamation of Holocaust survivor and scholar Dr. Yitzhak Arad, a founding member of your own commission? Of Holocaust survivor and scholar Dr. Rachel Margolis? (background)

Dr. Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), Valiant Chair of the Lithuanian Jewish Community (1992 to Early 2013) Turns 85!

TRIBUTES ON FACEBOOK. ALPEROVICH ON: DOUBLE GENOCIDE; A FOREIGN MINISTER’S ANTISEMITIC TIRADE; STATE HONORS FOR HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS, THE LAF & 1941 NAZI PUPPET GOV’T; POLICY OF HONORING BOTH PERPETRATORS AND VICTIMS; DEFAMATION OF JEWISH ANTI-NAZI PARTISAN HEROES (AND RED-BROWN COMMISSION’S SILENCE); DISNEYLAND GHETTO PROJECTS.

Dr. Shimon Alperovich

History of Defending History…

2013: Bernard Dichek in The Jerusalem Report. Danny Ben-Moshe’s film Rewriting History. 2010: Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service. 2010: Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post. 2009: Rafael Aaren in Haaretz. 2008: Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds.

Selection of Essays on the Issues

Yitzhak Arad; Yehuda Bauer; Danny Ben-Moshe; Gordon Brown; Abraham Cooper; Pinchos Fridberg; Sir Martin Gilbert; Clemens Heni; Dovid Katz; John Mann; Jonathan Freedland; Lord Janner; Leigh Phillips; Leyzer Ran Family; Tessa Rajak; Heidemarie Uhl; Efraim Zuroff; Voices of Holocaust survivors.

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Boxes, Persons of the Year | Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Rachel Kostanian, Rachel Margolis, Sir Martin Gilbert, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off

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FILM & VIDEO

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YOUR COUNTRY

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BOOKS / ARTS

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CEMETERIES

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2014 Brussels Focus

Posted on 11 December 2013 by Defending History

Should the EU Really be Plowing Your Taxes into a “Platform” for Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation & the Prague Declaration? Their latest conflicts here, here & here.

“Reconciliation of Histories” is Orwellian Doublespeak

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Real Progress

Posted on 11 December 2013 by Defending History

World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) “Fully Endorses” the Seventy Years Declaration (SYD)

Danny Ben-Moshe’s documentary in the USA; Richard Bloom’s on Youtube

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Posted on 14 October 2013 by Defending History

Person of the Year: Pinchos Fridberg

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Joseph Levinson: Website Launched

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Posted on 14 October 2013 by Defending History

Featured Interview: Roza Levitaite

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Defending History Honors

Posted on 31 July 2013 by Defending History

BOLD CITIZENS WHO STAND UP FOR HISTORIC DIGNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN LITHUANIA (AND ANYWHERE!)

When they’re afraid to publish in Balbíreshok, just bring it here…

Olga Zabludoff’s Open Letter to South African Litvaks, too hot for the South African Jewish Report, now appears here

VIDEO: RACHEL KOSTANIAN GOES ON THE RECORD ABOUT “DOUBLE GENOCIDE”

VILNIUS HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR PROF. PINCHOS FRIDBERG’S NEW ATTEMPT TO CORRECT AN ERROR; BACKGROUND

LITHUANIA TRIBUNE: SERGEJUS KANOVIČIUS EXPOSES DIVERGENT TEXTS (ENGLISH VS LITHUANIAN) IN STATE ARCHIVE’S NEW VILNA GHETTO EXHIBIT

MONICA LOWENBERG’S PETITION IS RENEWED ON EVE OF 23 SEPTEMBER

DOES IT GIVE A THRILL TO TRAMPLE OLD JEWISH GRAVESTONES ON THE WAY TO CHURCH?

Professor Karen Sutton’s Essential Book on the Lithuanian Holocaust

AVAILABLE AGAIN

RECENT BOOKS:

David Bankier’s Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania. Efraim Zuroff’s review.

Grant Arthur Gochin’s Malice, Murder, and Manipulation: One Man’s Quest for Truth.

Keith Morgan’s Ruta’s Closet. Interview with the author.

Books Reviewed. Film and Theatre. Video and Radio.

Holocaust Survivors Protest Red-Brown Commission’s Vilnius Relaunch

Commission’s renewal comes with new defamation of Dr. Yitzhak Arad, former director of Yad Vashem. major scholar, and Holocaust survivor

DANNY BEN-MOSHE IN JERUSALEM REPORT

ON JEWISH COMMUNITY’S SITE. IN RUSSIAN: DH; LZB; Obzor.lt; Reporter; Shofar7.com

Yitzhak Arad’s paper covering the Commission’s role, government obfuscation of the Holocaust and the history of the Holocaust in Lithuanian sources

Commission’s website features the Prague Declaration and promotes Double Genocide; its chairman urged his country to adopt PD. Website defames Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg for having corrected an error. Still no public condemnation of the defamation of its own founding member Yitzhak Arad (or of Dr. Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed)

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND COMMENT BY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

PAGE, CRITIQUES AND SECTION ON THE COMMISSION. Recent PR event in Vilnius

Renewed Red-Brown Commission, funded by government, has members from the Genocide Center, the parliamentary state security committee, scholars who have tried to mitigate the Nazi loyalties and Holocaust collaboration of the 1941 Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and Provisional Government, and, shockingly for Holocaust survivors (and under political pressure) — Yad Vashem

Resignations from the Commission (& associated bodies) on principle include Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Gershon Greenberg, Professor Konrad Kwiet, Prof. Dov Levin

Commission Executive Director gives a very different spiel to Lithuanian audiences…

Are the Commission’s academic members aware of the body’s entanglement in the political imbroglio over demands for Russian compensation? Is the East European Holocaust being instrumentalized in a contemporary geopolitical context?

De-Obfuscating a Complicated Story into its Simple Core:

2013: Bernard Dichek in The Jerusalem Report. 2012: Efraim Zuroff in Haaretz. 2011: Danny Ben-Moshe’s film Rewriting History. 2010: Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service. 2010: Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post. 2010: Dovid Katz in the Guardian. 2009: Rafael Aaren in Haaretz. 2008: Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds.

Survivors, Scholars and Public Figures Speak Out:

See: Yitzhak Arad ◊ Yehuda Bauer ◊ Danny Ben-Moshe ◊ Gordon Brown ◊ Abraham Cooper ◊ Pinchos Fridberg ◊ Sir Martin Gilbert ◊ Clemens Heni ◊ John Mann ◊ Jonathan Freedland ◊ Lord Janner ◊ Leigh Phillips ◊ Leyzer Ran Family ◊ Tessa Rajak ◊ Heidemarie Uhl ◊ Efraim Zuroff ◊ More voices of Holocaust Survivors

AS

“Double Genocide” Lands in the United States of America

BY STEALTH BOMBER OUT OF THE EAST, UNDER THE RADAR

One of the demands of the 2008 Prague Declaration is “approved” by the US

Are US officials aware of the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration response?

What is “Double Genocide”?

by Irina Izhogina

Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Propose a Simple Honesty Test for Gala Sutzkever Events in Vilnius

Avrom Sutzkever as a young poet inVilna (from Defending History archive)

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TRANSLATION PRIZE SAGA; OPINIONS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS; THE PATTERN OF DOUBLE GAMES; 2012 SLSer SADDENED THAT MILAN CHERSONSKI WAS DROPPED FROM FACULTY. WAS HIS MESSAGE UNACCEPTABLE? SEE MILAN CHERSONSKI SECTION.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: REWRITING HISTORY COMING ON WEEKEND OF 3-4 AUGUST 2013

UK: GLASGOW, LEEDS, LIVERPOOL, LONDON, MANCHESTER, NEWCASTLE IN JULY 2013

A DOZEN SYNAGOGUES SCREEN DANNY BEN-MOSHE’S REWRITING HISTORY

United Synagogue of Great Britain Signs the Seventy Years Declaration

Film’s website ◊ Reviews ◊ Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) ◊ SYD debates ◊ SYD text ◊ in European languages ◊ Danny Ben-Moshe

A European Battle for Memory — and for Human Rights

The Debate in: Australia, Canada, EU, Israel, South Africa, UK, USA

London screenings of the documentary film Rewriting History

Litvak tourism, exotic tourism and dark tourism

Racism, antisemitism and homophobia in high places: Zeppelinus is key official at the Economy Ministry; Doesn’t like our editor…

Antisemitism and Honors for Holocaust collaborators

Red-Brown Commission blues

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Evaldas Balčiūnas on Holocaust perpetrators made into “heroes”

Milan Chersonski on young Lithuanian anti-fascists who speak up against the glorification of Holocaust perpetrators

Aleksanders Feigmanis on an unmarked Holocaust grave in Riga

Leena Hietanen on Germany’s president who is getting into bed with Estonian Holocaust revisionists

Dovid Katz in Hope not Hate on glorification of Nazi war criminals by an EU/NATO government and the same country’s neo-Nazis

Geoff Vasil on sophisticated attempts to sanitize Holocaust perpetrators

Lina Žigelytė on the neo-Nazis’ hatred of feminists

Efraim Zuroff in The Times of Israel on a Latvian celebration of the anniversary of… the 1941 Nazi invasion

Explore Defending History

What it’s all abut. Articles. Authors. Countries. Sections. Opinion. Books. Film. Litvak Culture, Litvak Studies (& map). Litvak Tourism (Dark Tourism too). Lithuanian Holocaust Studies (& map with shtetl list). Human Rights & LGBT issues. Antisemitism. Local citizens who stand up. More

ISSUES INCLUDE: “Double Genocide” & “Red-Brown Commission”; “Prague Declaration” (response: Seventy Years Declaration); “heroization” of collaborators; accusations against survivors; criminalization of debate; More

German and Estonian Presidents in Photo-op at “Double Genocide” Shrine in Tallinn

LEENA HIETANEN REPORTS FROM TALLINN

Tallinn photo-op with red-brown backdrop: Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves (left) with German president Joachim Gauck (Postimees—Erik Peinar). The modernist sculptural salute to red-brown equivalence, in the heart of an EU capital, showcases the curious supposed equality of the perpetrators and the liberators of Auschwitz. More red-brown iconography here.

A Vilnius Library with an Agenda?

Wyman Brent’s prophecy fulfilled?

Official invitation of the “Vilnius Jewish Public Library” to recent event glorifying the “Red-Brown Commission” without a single critic of the commission included in the panel. Geoff Vasil’s eyewitness report. The evening of elite Red-Brown Commission worship featured two top Commission operatives.

Previous event at “Jewish Library” included featured speaker from the antisemitic Genocide Center who the previous week (in the mainstream Lithuanian media) publicly belittled the Holocaust history of “Israeli [he means: Jewish] scholars” in his attempt to sanitize the LAF/PG 1941 killers of Lithuanian Jewry. English translation of his interview; Geoff Vasil replied in Defending History.

See section on the Library

But where were all these “Jewish culture loving dignitaries” when over a thousand neo-Nazis, some sporting swastikas, marched passed the library’s entrance on the nation’s independence day?

IS THE “JEWISH” LIBRARY STILL COURTING NAIVE FOREIGNERS AND ‘USEFUL JEWISH IDIOTS’ IN ZINGERIAN RED-BROWN CAMPAIGN?

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From the Red-Brown Commission’s website:

Commission’s executive director calls beloved Vilnius Holocaust survivor a “liar” on Commission’s website; Exec director’s performance in Riga; at Seimas (for a different audience…); in Rewriting History.

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Background on the “Red-Brown Commission”

Vilnius: Would a “Jewish Museum” Graywash the Holocaust?

RELATED: DARK TOURISM (FOCUSED ON THE ADULATION FOR HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS THAT LEADS TO SANITIZATION AND GLORIFICATION); WHAT WERE THE INTENTIONS OF THE LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT (LAF) BEFORE WAR BROKE OUT? MORE. 2011 EVENTS TO HONOR THEM…

SEE ARTICLES BY EVALDAS BALCIUNAS AND MILAN CHERSONSKI

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Litvak & Yiddish

Posted on 27 July 2013 by Defending History

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Jerusalem of Lithuania

Posted on 27 July 2013 by Defending History

Tribute to Milan Chersonski: a dozen years as editor of Lithuania’s last Jewish newspaper

VIDEO TRIBUTE HERE

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Zeppelinus

Posted on 27 July 2013 by Defending History

Official at Economy Ministry is Still Hard at Work on Antisemitic-Racist-Homophobic “Economics”

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Posted on 9 May 2013 by Defending History

Lithuanian Anti-Fascist Group Mounts Protest in Kaunas Against Glorification of 1941 LAF Killers on Anniversary of the Day the Killing Started

Courageous Antifa Lietuva banner reads: “Real heroes rescued people instead of killing them. Remember the victims of the Holocaust”

Milan Chersonski was there. His report on the event. His take: “Let the world know that not everyone in Lithuania tolerates the distortion of history.”

Milan Chersonski (second from right) is not the only one in town taking pictures of the banner and the handful of demonstrators. Police photographed anti-fascist participants and asked names and addresses (as last February).

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The group of courageous demonstrators at the Lietukis Garage memorial, in a city-center courtyard in Kaunas

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Milan Chersonski walks with the small group of Antifa Lietuva demonstrators who marched the same route though Kaunas old town that throngs of neo-Nazis take each year on February 16th. This year the neo-Nazis’ banner had honored the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister on whose watch the Lithuanian Holocaust began.

MORE IMAGES HERE

Antifa Lietuva’s report on the event; on Facebook

MEANWHILE, GENOCIDE CENTER’S MEMBER OF GOV’S RENEWED “RED-BROWN COMMISSION” WAS BUSY SANITIZING THE LAF (AND DISMISSING THE HISTORIC EVIDENCE OF “ISRAELI” SCHOLARS) IN NATIONAL MEDIA. Some of the sources.

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Could there really be a “June 23rd Street” in Vilnius?

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Background: Evaldas Balčiūnas; Milan Chersonski; Section on collaborators glorified. Honors for collaborators in public spaces. Reburial of 2012. Historical readings. More on June 1941.

INTERNATIONAL PETITION

Milan Chersonski (Vilnius):

Rehabilitation of the Past as a Tool in Modern Politics

Street name in Kaunas for the head of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (in Berlin) whose hateful radio addresses incited mobs to mass murder.

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The lecture hall at Vytautas Magnus University named for the actual Nazi puppet prime minister Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) who signed papers confirming German orders for sending the Jews of his city (KAUNAS) to a concentration camp, and for incarcerating all the rest in the ghetto. The 2012 reburial saga.

Leena Hietanen (Tallinn) on the bestseller novel Purge:

Double Genocide: A Literary Jackpot?

Background: Sections on Double Genocide and Collaborators Glorified; Yitzhak Arad’s paper on the academic evolution of the revisionist paradigm; Efraim Zuroff’s “The Equivalency Canard”; articles by Danny Ben-Moshe and Dovid Katz.

Litvak Holocaust Survivors: Betrayed Again?

State-sponsored “red-brown commission” in Vilnius posts new list of members

Commission has caused concern among survivors themselves: Yitzhak Arad, Pinchos Fridberg, Dov Levin, Joseph Melamed, Basheva Ran. A decade and a half of issues.

Still no apology to commission’s former (& founding) member Yitzhak Arad after massive state-sponsored defamation

In 2013, Commission defames Vilnius survivor Pinchos Fridberg on its website, and uses conference in Riga to attack Defending History. Commission member from the Genocide Center uses 23 June 2013 in newest attempt to whitewash 1941 LAF collaborators and perpetrators, in defiance of the history. Accidental omission? His entry on Commission members’ list (with no hint of “completely separate subcommissions”) omits the “detail” that he is director of the “Genocide and Resistance Research Department” at the Genocide Center…

MORE HERE

FILM

Screening tour of Rewriting History in the UK (London July 10th 2013), presented by Danny Ben-Moshe. RELATED: US tour.

Documentary films by Richard Bloom (USA) and Christian Carlsen (Germany), both scheduled for release on 23 Sept 2013. SEE ALSO: Film listings and Film & Theatre section.

The Clock is Ticking…

A Time for Loyalty to Litvak (and All) Holocaust Survivors

TO EVERY THING THERE IS A TIME UNDER THE SUN…

A Need for De-Obfuscation?

Newest Word for Holocaust Revisionism in Eurospeak? “ISTME” (pronounced Is-it-me?) comes under “Science and Technology”!

Is the EU Again Being Bamboozled with “Double Genocide”? Are fine scholars again unwittingly instrumentalized for DG?

More red-equals-brown movement dissemination, now via “Science and Technology”? Orwellian concoctions to downgrade the Holocaust and stifle debate include: “Reconciliation of European Histories”, “Platform of European Memory”, “principle of non-discrimination of victimhood” and now, under “European cooperation in science and technology” (!) a brand new “Euro-classic”: In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME)…

Will it be a fair and balanced conference in Cracow on 16-18 Sept. 2013? Will there be critical papers on the Prague Declaration (and SYD), Double Genocide? state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators (in Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine)? arbitrary redefinition of genocide? attempts to incriminate survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance? “red-brown” laws restricting free speech in Hungary and Lithuania?

RELATED: Was Montero instrumentalized in 2011? When the EU “just said No” (2010) [background]; EU section.

Shrines for Nazis, in the EU

International Petition Tops 750 Mark; Progress Seen, as Organizers of Kaunas “Religious Heritage” Conference Reported to Seek Alternative Venue; Vytautas Magnus University Continues to Honor City’s 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Presided over Initiation of the Lithuanian Holocaust

He was honored by the central government too in a fiasco including Kaunas’s university. Its leading historian told the press that reburying the fascist underlines “the drama of Lithuanian history” and lamented that administrators were “afraid of getting hit over the head by the Jews with a club.” The city’s Jewish population, once over 30,000, is now several hundred, close to statistical zero.

Defending History urges people of conscience politely to refrain from entering the building until the shrines are removed.

What was going on in Kaunas (Kovno) during the tenure of the June-August 1941 “Provisional Government”? Here, white-armbanders loyal to the gov take women citizens to humiliation and death because they are Jewish…

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Related: Evaldas Balčiūnas on a military academy named for someone with Nazi-era biographical gaps…..

28-30 May 2013

Fireworks in Jerusalem

Times of Israel coverage by Raphael Ahren. Comment by: Abraham Foxman, Clemens Heni, Robert Wistrich, Efraim Zuroff. More debate.

27-28 May 2013

Fireworks in Riga

On the Watch, In Real Time

DEFENDING HISTORY MONITORS THE EAST EUROPEAN EXPORT OF REVISIONIST HOLOCAUST HISTORY, ATTEMPTS AT GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL COLLABORATORS, AND THE ACCOMPANYING RACISM, ANTISEMITISM AND HOMOPHOBIA

CHECKING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE:

Australia, Canada, EU, Israel, South Africa, UK, USA

DEFENDING HISTORY SUPPORTS HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, RESISTANCE HEROES AGAINST NAZISM, EAST EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES, YIDDISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE; WITH EMPHASIS ON THE LITVAK CULTURE, LEGACY, HISTORY AND FUTURE

MISSION MEDIA NEWS LITVAK CULTURE & TOURISM

Rewriting History ◊ More documentaries ◊ SYD ◊ Donate ◊ Facebook ◊ Neo-Nazis target DefendingHistory.com ◊ But many courageous citizens stand up with courage

22 May 2013

Admirers, in Vilnius, say ‘Happy Birthday’ on Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky’s 91st

Veteran of the Vilna Jewish partisans, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky answers questions from an international audience that came to celebrate her 91st birthday (at the Jewish Community of Lithuania, in the room dedicated to veterans of the Jewish resistance against the Nazis). She was one of the victims, in recent years, of local prosecutors’ kangaroo “war crimes investigations” against Lithuanian Jews who survived the Holocaust precisely because they joined the anti-Nazi resistance.

Brantsovsky set the tone for public resistance early on, in May 2008, in a Jerusalem Post interview, concurrent with the Wiesenthal Center’s letter to the then Lithuanian ambassador in Israel, and followed by the Jewish community’s own protest. The campaign of defamation has extended to some of the last Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, including Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Prof. Sara Ginaite, Dr. Rachel Margolis, and attorney Joseph Melamed, head of the world’s last active associations of Litvak survivors. There has been massive international reaction including the Australian made documentary film Rewriting History, and the American Defending Holocaust History (scheduled for 23 Sept 2013 release).

HELP SAVE THE FOREST FORT WHERE FANIA YOCHELES AND ANOTHER 100 JEWISH SURVIVORS OF THE VILNA GHETTO FOUGHT THE NAZIS

There is still time for Lithuania’s government to end the six hundred year pre-Holocaust sharing of space in the spirit of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the happier note of reconciliation via public apologies to the defamed Jewish partisans (who continue to be defamed in new publications, e.g. “Intermarium” and on Wikipedia etc).

14-15 May 2013

Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw, Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”

Not one presentation on EU states’ glorification of local Holocaust perpetrators (including street names and reburials of Nazi collaborators; commemorations in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania); criminalization of debate; Holocaust Obfuscation; Double Genocide; distortionist “genocide museums” and “genocide centers”; state accusations against survivors; failure to seriously prosecute Nazi war criminals and the need for study of underlying narrative-revising motives; red-brown commission’s campaign against a courageous Holocaust survivor in 2013; issues with the Prague Declaration; the Seventy Years Declaration.

Survivor circles express quiet regret that DC’s Holocaust Museum (USHMM) unwittingly supports revisionist agenda by legitimizing, via simple participation, another Double Genocide event in Europe. At earlier events, USHMM was one of an array of “useful Western legitimizers” but this time around it is the only one.

9 May 2013

Jewish Community of Lithuania Honors Veterans of the War Against Hitler

Jewish children lead each of the surviving Jewish veterans of World War II to the rapturous welcome of a huge crowd at the Jewish Community of Lithuania’s headquarters in central Vilnius.

Posted in Boxes | Tagged Canada + Holocaust issues, EU + Holocaust issues, Israel + Holocaust issues, Landsbergis + Holocaust issues, Maceva, South Africa + Holocaust issues, UK + Holocaust issues, USA + Holoaust issues, USHMM, USHMM + DOUBLE GENOCIDE | Comments Off

Exposé in Lithuania

Posted on 4 May 2013 by Defending History

Three Major Lithuanian Sites Claim that Neo-Nazi Internet Figure “Zeppelinus,” a Hater of Poles, Jews, Roma, Russians, Blacks and Gays is actually…

Posted in Boxes | Tagged Augustinas Voldemaras, Holocaust in Latvia, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish Partisans Vilna and Kovno, Jewish Vilnius, Lawin Law Firm, Lithuanian Activist Front, Litvak Congress 2013, Monica Lowenberg, Vilna Ghetto, Vilnius Ghetto | Comments Off

Posted on 1 May 2013 by Defending History

Efraim Zuroff on Baltic antisemitism

Posted in Boxes | Comments Off

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15 April 2024

this Monday, 22 April, 9 PM to late, at the

Narutis Hotel, Pilies g. 24 (ground floor, hall at end of corridor)

Everyone is welcome! Admission free! No tickets required! More information at Facebook page of the Vilnius Jewish Community . . .◊

April 2024

Do the leaders and supporters of the AJC know of its unethical and destructive activities in Lithuania over many years? How AJC’s Andrew Baker responds to a Lithuanian Jew who dares write in protest?

Real Lithuanian tradition rabbis have spoken out with simple integrity. Statement of four yeshiva heads, and of Rabbi Elchonon Baron.

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HUMAN RIGHTS INCLUDE THE RIGHT OF THE DEAD TO BE LEFT IN PEACE

EQUAL RIGHTS INCLUDE THE RIGHTS OF MINORITY CEMETERIES (ESP. MINORITIES DECIMATED BY GENOCIDE) TO ATTRACT THE SAME STATE GUARDIANSHIP AND DIGNITY AS THOSE OF THE CHRISTIAN LITHUANIAN MAJORITY

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March 2024

Welcoming Springtime in Vilnius with Ever More Repairs at Library of Sciences

BUT STILL NO ANNOUNCED DECISION ON FUTURE OF CENTRAL VILNIUS SHRINE TO HITLER COLLABORATOR J. NOREIKA. A SHRINE WITH A RECENT STORIED HISTORY. ONE OF A NUMBER OF PUBLIC-SPACE SHRINES IN VILNIUS GLORIFYING LOCAL HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS.

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Critics ask: Is it all to avoid making the bold decision to leave the plaque and bas relief of Noreika away from the building’s facade and right on the junkpile of Hitlerist paraphernalia — where it justly belongs?

“These repairs, approaching the one-year mark, are the Vilnius answer to Chris Christie’s Washington Bridge repair scheme”…

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February 2024

America’s new ambassador in Vilnius, HE Kara McDonald, makes a dramatic entrance that will go down in history, citing glorified Holocaust perpetrators Krikštaponis and Noreika by name, in first major interview:

“I will continue to speak out strongly against the glorification of individuals who are known and documented to have participated in the Holocaust. This is part of the definition of antisemitism.”

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AMBASSADOR MCDONALD’S FIRST MAJOR CHALLENGE: Hope rising that the ambassador can succeed to persuade authorities to truly join West’s sensibilities in their imminent decision on…

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Can a handful of antisemitic, ultranationalist, Holocaust-revising elites continue to stymie Lithuania’s progress?

The day will come, when the nation’s educators, journalists, parliamentarians and cultural leaders will appreciate who were the true friends of Lithuania in the 2020s. . .

Jan. 2024

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Dec. 2023

We wish all our readers

Happy Holidays, Happy Chanukah, Happy Christmas, Happy New Year 2024!

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Dec. 2023

B’nai B’rith Australia & New Zealand award: “DefendingHistory.com stands as the pre-eminent record of historic truth in the face of well funded state efforts to rewrite history”

Nov.-Dec. 2023

The frightening imagined image that so disgusts antisemites in town: the idea that A Cemetery Is A Cemetery, that the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery is the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, not a convention or memorial center, not a museum or fun & recreation park…

QUESTION for the Working Group members: Would any of this be happening to a half-millennium old Christian or Lithuanian national cemetery where many thousands still lie buried?

☰ Who will be the second? ☰

Autumn 2023

‘It Pays to Defend History’: Yad Vashem’s new chairman, Dani Dayan, gives watershed speech at Lithuania’s parliament

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August 2023

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B’nai B’rith Australia & New Zealand issues press release; on J-Wire; archived

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Summer 2023

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“Forbidden” scenes in the film Petrified Time have become known informally as The Satanic Verses

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16 June 2023

Lithuanian cartoonist Voluvak on whether in the internet age film footage of real significance for the historic record of Western civilization can be eaten up (“catch and kill”) before ever seeing the wider light of day.

May 2023

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