Documents

All Welcome at Seimas Exhibition on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery; Public Opening on 17 Sept. 2026

Posted on 15 September 2026 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | COMMENT BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, SID LEIMAN, JULIUS NORWILLA, DOVID KATZ | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO “COMPROMISE’ MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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The following press release was received today from the Vilnius office of Gerbkime kapines (Respect Cemeteries):

Visitors are warmly invited to attend the opening of the exhibition on Thursday, Sept. 17, at 1 p.m. Those wishing to attend should contact Emanuelis Zingeris’s adviser, Auksė Dransard, no later than the preceding day, providing their first and last names and date of birth so that admission to the Seimas can be arranged.

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On Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, at 1 p.m., an exhibition titled “The Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės, Vilnius” will open in the Stained Glass Gallery of the Seimas, Lithuania’s Parliament. The exhibition is being presented under the auspices of Member of Parliament Emanuelis Zingeris. It was prepared by Artūras Imbrasas together with the association Gerbkime kapines (“Respect Cemeteries”). The creative team also includes the association’s chair, Rūta Bloštein, as well as Arkadij Kurliandčik, Andrius Kulikauskas and Edmundas Kulikauskas.

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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Comments Off on All Welcome at Seimas Exhibition on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery; Public Opening on 17 Sept. 2026

German Bundestag and Government Statements on the Rapidly Sinking Remnants of the Last Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania

Posted on 2 September 2026 by Defending History

LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | 20-YEAR CAMPAIGN TO DEFAME THE VILNA JEWISH PARTISANS | HISTORY | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

 

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Berlin speaks of respect for the last remnant of Jewish partisan resistance, and particularly the partisan fort where the Vilna Jewish Partisans, all escapees from the Vilna Ghetto, lived and fought the Nazis, most famously after the ghetto’s liquidation on 23 September 1943 and right up to the end of Nazi occupation in July 1944.

But the German army’s new Panzerbrigade 45 is the new factor causing the fort’s rapid deterioration. In spite of all the laudable German government statements and commitments set out below (with links to sources), the remnants of Lithuania’s last surviving Jewish partisan fort from the resistance to Nazi rule — in the historic Rudnitsk Forest, today Rūdninkai Forest — have been deteriorating rapidly since the arrival immediately nearby, in the same forest, of Germany’s new NATO-affiliated Panzerbrigade 45 (“Litauenbrigade”).

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Documents, EU, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, History, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Jewish Fort in the Lithuanian Forest: A Last Remnant of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on German Bundestag and Government Statements on the Rapidly Sinking Remnants of the Last Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania

Blaming the Victims: Documents from a 20 Year Campaign to Defame and Decommemorate the Jewish Partisan Resistance against the Nazis

Posted on 27 August 2026 by Defending History

LAST UPDATE
(originally published 21 Aug. 2010). See also (older, not updated) Responses page.

2006    2007    2008    2009    2010    2011   2012    2013    2014    2015    2016    2017   2024   2025   2026

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The campaign of defamation by Lithuanian state prosecutors and allied elites (particularly in the Genocide Center and the antisemitic right-wing press) has resulted in a number of cherished Holocaust Survivors being smeared as “war criminals” without a single charge ever having been leveled against anybody. Launched in 2006, the campaign, abusing tools such as “pre-trial investigations” and leaks to the media, have sought to brand as “war criminals” the heroes of the war against Hitler. It grew in 2011 with the addition of equally perverse  “libel charges,” launched with fanfare when Interpol (!) was sent to disturb in Tel Aviv the elected head of the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world. Then, in 2013, the state’s “red-brown commission” defamed one of Vilnius’s last survivors on equally perverse grounds, all the while putting on “Holocaust events” for naive Western audiences, usually funded by the (unknowing) Lithuanian taxpayer, in venues  including London, New York, Toronto, and Vilnius.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Blaming the Victims: Documents from a 20 Year Campaign to Defame and Decommemorate the Jewish Partisan Resistance against the Nazis

Document Discovered: Soviet Act of 22 Oct. 1940 Seizing (Stealing) the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Vilnius Jewish Community

Posted on 12 June 2026 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—A deeply ethical and conscientious Vilnius scholar, flabbergasted by the local “mainstream” media’s rehashing of the mantra (and sheer antisemitic nonsense) that “the Jews sold the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to the czar in 1830” decided to look in the archives. When he succeeded to find the document, issued by Stalin’s USSR on 22 October 1940 ordering the confiscation (i.e. theft) of the Jewish cemeteries under the aegis of the Vilnius Jewish Community, he just did the right thing and released it to the public domain. That Stalinist order came very soon after the summer 1940 forcible annexation of Lithuania and its two Baltic state neighbors, into the Soviet Union.

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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Document Discovered: Soviet Act of 22 Oct. 1940 Seizing (Stealing) the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Vilnius Jewish Community

Text of Rabbi Elchonon Baron’s Letter to the Chancellor of the Office of Lithuania’s President

Posted on 3 June 2026 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—The office of Rabbi Elchonon Baron, president of Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL), today released this letter to Petras Zapolskas, Chancellor of the Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania. English text of the letter follows. For the Lithuanian text, please use the page-turning handle at upper left.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Tagged , | Comments Off on Text of Rabbi Elchonon Baron’s Letter to the Chancellor of the Office of Lithuania’s President

Rabbi Elchonon Baron Warns Lithuanian Gov. that ‘Blessings’ Will Not Come to the Country from Construction of Conference Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 23 July 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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Rabbi Elchonon Baron speaking to Lithuanian media at the Vilnius Jewish Community’s protest at the cemetery last year. DH Photo: William Adan Pahl.

VILNIUS—Rapidly following upon the announcement today by Lithuania’s prime minister that he is ordering revival of the project to remodel a hated Soviet ruin in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery into a new national conference center, the office of Rabbi Elchonon Baron, president of JHL (Jewish Heritage in Lita), released his letter to the prime minister in both Lithuanian and English. They appear just below in PDF format.

During a protest at the cemetery coordinated with the Vilnius Jewish Community last summer, Rabbi Baron gave a powerful interview to Lithuania media (video), which was however not included in the evening news coverage (see report). Defending History’s reaction to the prime minister’s statement appeared earlier today.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron Warns Lithuanian Gov. that ‘Blessings’ Will Not Come to the Country from Construction of Conference Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Posted on 21 April 2025 by Defending History

[2 May 2025 update at end of post]

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | A STOLEN ELECTION | CHABAD IN VILNIUS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Even people who “thought they had seen everything” were taken aback a week ago, when without prior warning Vilnius’s only functioning synagogue was closed down on the occasion of the first seyder night of Passover, one of the most sacred Jewish calendar days of the year. The “explanation” did come shortly thereafter in the form of an official 13 April 2025 statement on the official website of the restitution fueled “Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania” (the “LJC” as is it is still known from the long time title “Lithuanian Jewish Community”, LZB in Lithuanian). That is the “community” that disenfranchised virtually all the remaining few thousand Jewish people in Lithuania, by changing the system of voting (in the middle of an election campaign season!) from choice by community members to that of “associations” mostly benefiting from restitution funds. This transpired during the allegedly rigged 2017 community elections. See also the contemporary JTA reports (here and here). The official community has received tens of millions of dollars from the government in restitution.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Chabad in Vilnius, Documents, Has Lithuanian Quango ('Good Will Foundation') Been Using Jewish Restitution Funds for Bitter and Sometimes Violent Campaign against Chabad Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky?, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation

Posted on 4 February 2025 by Defending History

FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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The following is a full translation of the recent email blast published in Defending History in the original Lithuanian on 31 Jan. For background see the English introduction there, as well as reports and discussion on the DH editor’s Facebook page. For a full chronology of the now nineteen year old campaign against Holocaust survivors who survived by joining the anti-Nazi resistance see DH’s Blaming the Victims page.  Obersvers have noted that the German teacher recruited to launch the campaign of defamation against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) and Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis, I. Tumavičiūtė in a January 2008 article in a far-right antisemitic daily (original; English translation) reappears this week as the campaign, apparently including the Genocide Center (GRRLC) and its director, is duly relaunched. Note the text contains the link to the online clip from a Soviet-era documentary where Fania Brantsovsky’s remarks about regrettable civilian casualties during the partisans’ battles against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania is maliciously taken out of context to imply targeting of civilians and/or her own participation in the battle described. The youtube video clip, that has been up for seven years is entitled “isgama  branvcovskaja” that translates as “The Degenerate Brantsovsky” or “Scum Brantsovsky.” More background of “polite” state support for the defamation of Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance includes the public statement for a video documentary by the executive director of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”). The participation of the state-sponsored Genocide Center in this week’s events is apparently meant to give the new campaign an air of legitimacy, during a time of much-heightened antisemitic sentiment.

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https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/

COMMEMORATION of Kaniūkai Village Residents, Murdered by Soviet Partisans in 1944

February 2, 2025

10:30 AM – Holy Mass at St. Ignatius Church (Vilnius)
11:30 AM – Departure for Kaniūkai village cemetery (Šalčininkai district) after the Holy Mass
2:00 PM – Start of the commemoration event

Participants:

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, General Director of GRRCL

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation

Two Statements by Prof. Sid Leiman, To Date Only Member of Commission on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to Resist ‘Directed Foregone Conclusion’

Posted on 20 March 2024 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | 2023 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE” LONDON GRAVE TRADERS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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The office of Professor Sid Leiman, a member of the Commission (or “Working Group”) established in 2023 to advise Lithuania’s prime minister on the future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, today released for the public record two statements, both of 28 November 2023. One is his letter to Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, which itself forwarded to the PM his earlier letter of the same date to fellow Commission members. The two attachments, one in Hebrew and one in English, were both published at the time by Defending History. They are the Hebrew and the English version of the call by four leading heads of Lithuanian heritage yeshivas around the world. In short order, a fifth head of a Lithuanian yeshiva wrote separately for the record.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Sid (Shnayer) Leiman | Comments Off on Two Statements by Prof. Sid Leiman, To Date Only Member of Commission on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to Resist ‘Directed Foregone Conclusion’

A ‘Shameful’ Public Letter by Five Vilnius Architects: Would They Be Saying This About a Christian Lithuanian Cemetery of 500 Years’ Vintage?

Posted on 22 December 2023 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE” LONDON GRAVE TRADERS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—Five eminent Vilnius architects have released to the public domain a letter to the mayor of Vilnius expressing their passionate views on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Shnípishok section, today’s Šnipiškės in beautiful, modern Vilnius). Many thousands of Vilna Jewish citizens still lie buried in the cemetery, though the Soviets pilfered all the gravestones and constructed the hated “Sports Palace” (long a derelict, dangerous ruin) in its center, followed by construction of “the two green buildings” under Lithuanian sovereignty early in the twenty-first century.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A ‘Shameful’ Public Letter by Five Vilnius Architects: Would They Be Saying This About a Christian Lithuanian Cemetery of 500 Years’ Vintage?

A Masterclass in Orwellian Discourse: The Vilnius Cemetery Commission Minutes of 26 October 2023

Posted on 10 November 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | 2023 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE” LONDON GRAVE TRADERS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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by Dovid Katz

This week’s release of the official minutes, in Lithuanian and in English, of the 26 October 2023 meeting of the current international “Working Group” (list of members) established to advise on the future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Shnípishok district, today’s Šnipiškės) contain some passages, in the view of this journal, worthy of George Orwell. Here are some samples from the official English language text (the entirety of which appears below, and is available in PDF format). Each quote in bold text is followed by some commentary.

“The objective is to honour and commemorate the centuries-long history of Lithuanian Jews and the Šnipiškės cemetery.”

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A Masterclass in Orwellian Discourse: The Vilnius Cemetery Commission Minutes of 26 October 2023

Text of 2020 Litvak Rabbinic Decision on Old Vilna Cemetery and Powerful Statement of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER)

Posted on 27 October 2023 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | VILNIUS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—In view of diverse characterizations circulating regarding the content of the judgment on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Snípishok/Šnipiškės district), handed down by Litvak Jewry’s highest international rabbinic authority, on 9 February 2020 (14 Shvat 5780), signed also by the late and revered Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky (1928-2022) of blessed memory, Defending History is providing the original documents of the certified English translation released by the court, as well as the Hebrew original. This was followed below by the Conference of European Rabbis’ solemn repudiation of any role for the London-based CPJCE, issued on 29 Sept. 2020, after years of documentation of allegedly corrupt activities in the alleged de facto sale of East European cemeteries with which they have no historic ties of any kind.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Vilnius | Comments Off on Text of 2020 Litvak Rabbinic Decision on Old Vilna Cemetery and Powerful Statement of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER)

Furore over the ‘Baron Memorandum’ to Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Speaker of Seimas

Posted on 5 October 2023 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE: 15 OCT.]

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | CHABAD IN VILNIUS

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First, the documents.

All these recent documents, circulated by now to hundreds (if not thousands) of recipients, whether by direct email blast or by multiple forwards of such blasts (by their own authors’ offices and supporters), are, needless to say, now in the public domain, and form part of an important record for the issues of today, and for the chronicles of history.

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Posted in Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Furore over the ‘Baron Memorandum’ to Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Speaker of Seimas

Issues 1 – 35 of the Oxford Yiddish-in-Yiddish Magazine ‘Yiddish Pen’ (די פּען), 1998 — 1994

Posted on 29 May 2023 by Defending History

YIDDISH AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AT OXFORD | DOCUMENTS 

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Note: For English table-of-contents pages, please scroll to the end of each PDF. Scans of contents and title pages only (for issues 1-27) are available here and here.

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Yiddish Pen 1

Yiddish Pen 2

Yiddish Pen 3

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Posted in Documents, Yiddish Affairs, Yiddish at Oxford | Tagged | Comments Off on Issues 1 – 35 of the Oxford Yiddish-in-Yiddish Magazine ‘Yiddish Pen’ (די פּען), 1998 — 1994

Elena Rimdžiūtė: Video of Christian Witness to the Holocaust in Šeduva, in Northern Lithuania

Posted on 24 October 2021 by Defending History

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VILNIUS—The Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA), a Defending History affiliated project, providing hundreds of Yiddish language video interviews in the “Lithuanian lands” (today’s Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Ukraine and northeastern Poland), conducted from 1990 to 2020 has just released a Holocaust-history extract from a longer interview, conducted in May 2000 in Šeduva, northern Lithuania, with the town’s last Yiddish speaker, the Christian Lithuanian native of the town, the late Elena Rimdžiūtė. As is evident from the clip, the interviewer, Dovid Katz, was focused on Elena’s Yiddish folksongs, and the Holocaust arises, at first tangentially, when Elena speaks of her friends who are no more.

See DH’s Šeduva section

The clip on Youtube is accompanied by a draft English translation (in the “Description Box”). This remarkable woman’s honesty, integrity, and desire to Just Tell it Straight, makes for a striking contrast with the current Baltic academic establishment’s claptrap about Prague Declarations, equivalence of totalitarian regimes, tale of two Holocausts, and fairy tales about the “uprising against the Soviets” celebrated in Vilnius’s Genocide Museum (recently renamed), and promoted by the state-sponsored Genocide Center and numerous public shrines to local Holocaust murderers of 1941.

Here is Ms. Rimdžiūtė’s genuine Šeduva Yiddish rendition of the beloved song, where a girl explains that she wants neither new clothes from the tailor nor shoes from the shoemaker but expresses her sadness that all the other girls have boys (altered in the final stanza to ‘get married’). The clip is followed by a draft English translation concluding with a transcription of song in Šeduva Yiddish.

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Posted in Documents, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Elena Rimdžiūtė: Video of Christian Witness to the Holocaust in Šeduva, in Northern Lithuania

Authorized English Version of Cemetery Edict by Doyen of Litvak Rabbis

Posted on 6 July 2020 by Defending History

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES  |  CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT  |  OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  | INTERNATIONAL PETITION

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VILNIUS—As reported on 21 February, the rabbi considered the world’s senior authority among the rabbinate  in the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) tradition, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, issued a major edict concerning the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in today’s Šnipiškės district). Thanks to a request by Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas of Vilnius, and the assistance of Dov-Ber and Chaya Fried of New York City, the rabbinical court in Bnei Brak, Israel, has issued an authorized and notarized English translation of the original, written in rabbinic Hebrew. The English text is available as PDF, and below (please use handles at upper left to turn pages).

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Comments Off on Authorized English Version of Cemetery Edict by Doyen of Litvak Rabbis

Do the Bones of Old Vilna Jewry Still Lie at Piramónt Cemetery?

Posted on 5 May 2020 by Defending History

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY  |  OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  |  INTERNATIONAL PETITION  |  HUMAN RIGHTS   |  DOCUMENTS

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VILNIUS—A recent social media campaign has been spreading the message that there are no longer human remains at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, in today’s Šnipiškės section of modern Vilnius, the capital of democratic EU and NATO member Lithuania. Of course within the Jewish faith the sanctity of Jewish cemeteries remains in situ despite earth disruptions. “There is no such thing as a former Jewish cemetery,” Lithuania’s last chief rabbi, Chaim Burshtein, pointed out, before being fired in 2015 for expressing his opposition to “the convention center in the cemetery.”

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Do the Bones of Old Vilna Jewry Still Lie at Piramónt Cemetery?

Revealed: The “Secret Vilna Cemetery Agreement” of Dec. 2019

Posted on 8 March 2020 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY  |OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  |  INTERNATIONAL PETITION

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VILNIUS—On 19 December 2019, Defending History reported on the “Day of Shame” in this city, when representatives of the discredited “CPJCE” rabbis in London, a Haifa geotechnical  specialist in tow, and the head of the state-sponsored “official” Jewish community together allegedly “morally sold out” the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to Turto Bankas, a Lithuanian government state agency for development as a convention center where people would cheer, clap, sing, dance, drink at bars and flush toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves on all four sides, including some of the greatest Jewish scholars of the last five hundred years. The international opposition to the “convention center in the cemetery” has been massive. It is a human rights issue in so far as such fates do not await cemeteries of the religious or ethnic majority.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Comments Off on Revealed: The “Secret Vilna Cemetery Agreement” of Dec. 2019

Some Orders Issued by Jonas Noreika during the Destruction of Lithuania’s Jewish Citizens

Posted on 13 January 2019 by Defending History

COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED  |  HISTORY  |  DOCUMENTS

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VILNIUS—As the date (15 January) nears  of  what some have dubbed the Holocaust trial of the 21st century, an increasing number of observers request more information on the alleged Holocaust collaborator at the center of it all, Jonas Noreika (1910–1947). His case was brought to the English-reading world by Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas in 2012 (as part of a series on Holocaust collaborators who are glorified with state funding). Mr. Balčiūnas was “rewarded” with years of legal harassment from police and prosecutors over his objections to state honors for Holocaust collaborators (see the Balciunas section, scroll down to May 2014 for start of the legal proceedings; while enjoying a modern freewheeling democracy on nearly all issues, Lithuania’s residents have run into troubles when challenging state policy on the Holocaust.).

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Documents, History, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Comments Off on Some Orders Issued by Jonas Noreika during the Destruction of Lithuania’s Jewish Citizens

Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery: Geotechnical Expert Group’s Press Release of Sept. 2008 is “Back in Circulation”

Posted on 12 January 2019 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS  |  VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE  |  CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS  |  HUMAN RIGHTS  |  CEMETERIES  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY  |  OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  |  PETITION

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VILNIUS—At the request of Defending History staff, several news outlets here have located and released the original 3 September 2008 press release issued by Arieh Klein, head of the Experts Group appointed to conduct geophysical and other surveys of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in today’s Šnipiškės district of Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital) to determine the boundaries of the extant cemetery underground. This was always a public document intended for the media, marked as a “press release” in accompanying emails. It is available as PDF.

The document reveals that both “new green buildings” (the King Mindaugas Buildings) that were featured in this century’s first major dispute over this cemetery, are within the boundaries of the cemetery, as are, naturally, the banks, chic cafes and restaurants, apartments and other amenities and offices on the premises.

But to this day, the buildings’ operators dismiss the geotechnical findings as “slander”. Something to remember when you  next visit this part of Vilnius!

It is separately documented that truckloads of earth were clandestinely removed (and their location never disclosed), and that the builders’ and their government associates’ “bags of tricks” back then included setting up international committees with prestigious “Useful Jewish Idiots” — or UJIs — as local Jews refer informally to foreign Jewish dignitaries and professors who become part of the PR machine that is alleged to cover and deflect from various aspects of the Jewish news here. The full text of the press release follows.

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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Comments Off on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery: Geotechnical Expert Group’s Press Release of Sept. 2008 is “Back in Circulation”