Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania

Arūnas Bubnys’s book The Holocaust in the Lithuanian Provinces (Holokaustas Lietuvos provincijoje, Margi raštai, Vilnius, 2021) is another publication of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (ICECNSORL). Up until now, books published by the Commission were academically written and appreciated by a sophisticated readership. Moreover, they were always published in both Lithuanian and English. This book is different. It is available only in Lithuanian. Previously published monographs would also include Commission-approved conclusions; this book has no such thing. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Commission’s academics did not discuss the book among themselves before its publication. But let’s start at the beginning.

The book is geographically quite extensive: 23 counties and 140 towns are cited. This is really a lot, but it is also quite obvious that the coverage of towns in different counties is unequal. When it comes to Šilutė county in western Lithuania, for example, several camps and fates of individual Jews are mentioned in passing, but no single town is described. For the Marijampolė county, only the fate of the Jews of Marijampolė itself is presented. Šiauliai xounty (15 towns) and Alytus County (12 towns) are the most extensively covered.

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Books, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center in Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Soviet-Nazi crimes commission | Comments Off

In Lithuania, President’s Speech, New Monument, and Major Conference Glorify Alleged Participant in June 1941 Kaunas Atrocities Against Jewish Citizens

Posted on 5 September 2021 by Defending History

OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | GENOCIDE CENTER | KAUNAS: 2022 CAPITAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURE

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VILNIUS—Not for the first time, the annual Jewish High Holiday period encompassing Rosh Hashonna and Yom Kippur have provided “optimal timing” for state-sponsored activities glorifying Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators. Lithuania’s Seimas (parliament) had declared that the year per se, 2021, would be dedicated to the memory of Juozas Lukša, identified by eyewitnesses as one of the barbaric butchers of Jews in the Lietukis Garage Massacre in Kaunas in June 1941, during the week when fascist “LAF” (Lithuanian Activist Front) Hitlerist thugs murdered thousands of Jewish neighbors before the Nazis had even taken control. In 2011 a motion in the British Parliament referred to testimony that Lukša was also involved in the beheading of Rabbi Zalmen Osovsky the same week.

“The hard-working people of Lithuania deserve much better than for their tax euros to be squandered by ultranationalist leaders on state glorification of Hitler accomplices.”

This week’s festivities included, on 4 September 2021, a speech by the president of Lithuania to honor Lukša, a brand new Lukša monument unveiled to in a village where he operated, with participation by the director general of the Genocide Center, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys. The monument was “consecrated” by a major bishop who holds the title “president of the Commission on the External Relations of the EU”.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Juozas Lukša, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Alex Faitelson, Andrew Baker, Arunas Bubnys, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jewish Agency, Joint Distribution Committee, Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Laurence Weinbaum, Yakov Faitelson | Comments Off

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

Posted on 22 April 2021 by Defending History

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

Local reports (generally lacking any inkling of the international uproar over adulation of Holocaust perpetrators): 15 min.lt; alfa.lt; alkas.lt; delfi.lt; lrt.lt; lzb.lt; respublika.lt

Defending History broke news of the nomination on 14 April

“No, Sir. This is No Photoshop”

Algemeiner Journal is first foreign publication to cover the affair in reports of 15 April and of 22 April

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

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Silvia Foti | Comments Off

No Sir. This is No Photoshop.

Posted on 16 April 2021 by Defending History

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VILNIUS—Shortly after Defending History published the news yesterday that Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, longtime chief historian at Lithuania’s state sponsored far-right Genocide Center had been nominated by the speaker of parliament as the center’s new director, news published also by New York’s Algemeiner Journal, a social media campaign began to try to spread a rumor that the DH photo of Dr. Bubnys proudly speaking less than a year ago under banner images of Holocaust collaborators Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa was “photoshopped.” Two of DH’s Vilnius-based team, Julius Norwilla and Dovid Katz, monitored the event from start to finish. Their report appeared the same day, 23 June 2020, the 79th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Instead of honoring the victims — defenseless Jewish citizens, often older rabbis and younger women brutalized and murdered by the “White Armbander” fascists — the event, like many legitimized by Lithuanian government institutions, glorified the killers, who are invariably described as “heroic anti-Soviet rebels.” This is of course a patent historic nonsense. The USSR’s forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion, Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbanded Jew-killers. While the Soviets were in power, the Hitler-backers and murderers of civilian neighbors now adulated as “anti-Soviet rebels” did not fire a single shot. Not even at a local rabbit.

See DH’s sections on Dr. Bubnys, the Genocide Center, and commemorations of 23 June 1941, as well as reviews of his books on the Vilna Ghetto and on the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto.

Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Celebrations of 23 June 1941, Foti + Noreika, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jonas Noreika, Julius Norwilla (Norvila), Kazys Škirpa, Lithuanian Holocaust, Silvia Foti, The Nazi's Granddaughter | Comments Off

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

Posted on 14 April 2021 by Defending History

“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

VILNIUS—In a shock to Western allies and the large international Litvak community, the speaker of Lithuania’s Seimas (Parliament) has nominated historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys to be the new director of the state-sponsored Genocide Center (reports in Delfi.lt, LRT, BalticsNews, etc).

UPDATES

22 APRIL: BUBNYS NOMINATION CONFIRMED BY SEIMAS

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

Update of 21 April 2021: “No, Sir. This is No Photoshop”

Algemeiner Journal reports of 15 April and of 22 April

Background:

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

EYEWITNESS REPORT: DR. BYBNYS’S PUBLIC 2020 ADULATION OF COLLABORATORS

SECTION ON THE GENOCIDE CENTER

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center Vilnius, Glorification of Holocaust perpetrators, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jonas Noreika, Kazys Škirpa | Comments Off

Battles over History Unleashed on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021

Posted on 1 February 2021 by Defending History

On 27 January, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021:

Silvia Foti in the New York Times on her Grandfather Jonas Noreika

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Lev Golinkin in the Forward on the Proliferation of Statues and Monuments Glorifying Nazi Collaborators and — their Export to the US, Canada and Other Western Nations

Posted in Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged Double Genocide, Glorification of Holocaust perpetrators, Holocaust in Lihtuania, Holocaust Remembrance Day 27 Jan 2021, Lev Golinkin, Lithuanian parliament (Seimas), Rachel Kostanian, Silvia Foti | Comments Off

Large Poster of J. Noreika and K. Škirpa, Major Holocaust Collaborators, at Lithuanian President’s Public Event

Posted on 27 September 2020 by Defending History

GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS

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VILNIUS—The official website of the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, features a report and picture gallery of his speech on 20 September at the unveiling of a major monument, in the northwestern Lithuanian village Kryžkalnis, to postwar Lithuanian partisans who fought against the Soviet occupation of the country after World War II. As with other such events, the inclusion in the proceedings of honors for those who were recycled 1941 Holocaust collaborators turns what would be a uniting event celebrating freedom into an event that doubles as glorification also of the perpetrators and collaborators in the Lithuanian Holocaust, all of whom were in some sense ipso facto “anti-Soviet” (working for a Nazi victory).

Added arrows show the Noreika-Škirpa banner and the president speaking to the crowd at the inauguration of a new monument in northwestern Lithuania on 20 Sept. 2020. Original photo, by Robertas Dačkus is from Office of the President of Lithuania. Source.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Gitanas Nauseda, glorification of Holocaust collaborators, Holocause commemoration (Baltics), Holocaust in Lihtuania, Jonas Noreika, Kazys Škirpa, Kryžkalnis | Comments Off

Chief Historian of Lithuania’s State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” is Key Speaker at Events Glorifying June 23rd 1941 and — Noreika and Škirpa

Posted on 23 June 2020 by Defending History

OPINION | EVENTS | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | VILNIUS “GENOCIDE CENTER”

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, chief historian at the state sponsored “Genocide Center” proudly glorifying June 23rd 1941 under the visages of Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika (left) and ethnic cleansing advocate K. Škirpa in central Vilnius. Photo: DefendingHistory.com

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VILNIUS—The good news is that the press conference at the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) this morning featuring two members of parliament was in the end a small fringe event by the far right, including a renewed attack on Holocaust survivor and resistance hero Dr. Yitzhak Arad, one of the Jewish partisan veterans defamed and harassed by local prosecutors for some years. The evening event in central Vilnius had a dismal turnout of a few dozen people. Both events were dedicated to the glorification of June 23rd, the day the mass murder, injury, plunder and humiliation of Lithuanian Jewry by local Hitler supporters, most prominently the LAF (“Lithuanian Activist Front”) got underway, in a multitude of locations, most lethally Kaunas, before the arrival of the first German forces. Although it is universally accepted by serious historians that the Soviet Army was fleeing Hitler’s onslaught (Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history), the local far right continues to spew the narrative that this was actually a “rebellion” that “drove out” the Soviet army. (See Defending History’s coverage of previous years’ events and debates, an introductory reading list on the history, and the new English translation of extensive survivor testimonies.)

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, History, Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, glorification of Holocaust collaborators, Holocaust in Lithuania, June 23 1941 | Comments Off

Latest on State Honors for Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika

Posted on 4 May 2019 by Defending History

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OUR TAKE ON THE LATEST IN THE 7 YEAR OLD NOREIKA SAGA

VILNIUS—LRT state television reported that an American religious Jewish school would held a polite protest outside the Lithuanian consulate in New York on Yom Hashoah, 2 May, to protest the Lithuanian government’s continued state-sponsored glorification of Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika and others. The protest was carried out by students of the Rambam Mesivta High School, under the guidance of its renowned principal, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman. See Defending History’s report on the event.

Lithuanian Public Television’s Special Investigation of the controversy over Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika was supposed to air on Thursday May 2 at 7:30 PM (19:30), including an interview with Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas. But the program did not air. Instead, the LRT website posted an “Open Letter Regarding the Increase of Tension in Society” signed by four leaders of Lithuanian (ultra)nationalist organizations. The letter specifically attacks Chicago resident Silvia Foti, Noreika’s granddaughter, California resident Grant Gochin, and other critics of the glorification of Holocaust collaborators, while claiming that Noreika, Škirpa, Brazaitis, Krikštaponis and Kraujelis are national heroes. LRT.lt added a remark clarifying that, according to the Genocide Center, Krikštaponis participated in the mass murder of Jews. The article claims that criticism of glorification of Holocaust collaborators is the work of “Moscow.”

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, 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, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ilya Lempertas, ISrael Lempertas, Jonas Noreika, Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Prague Declaration (2008), Rambam School, Sivia Foti, Vytautas Landsbergis, Yivo and Lithuania | Comments Off

Eyewitness Report: Reading of Vilnius Court’s Verdict on State Adulation for Local Holocaust Collaborator

Posted on 27 March 2019 by Defending History

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‘Sad Day for Lithuania, and for Honest Holocaust Commemoration in Years Ahead’

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VILNIUS—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 perpetrato

rs 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.

Does the ruling reflect a new East European Holocaust sensibility that holds that participation in the destruction of a country’s Jewish citizens during the Holocaust was some minute detail that must not interfere with making heroes out of the local perpetrators and collaborators?

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 nervously 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.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Comments Off

The Strange Holocaust Trial in the Lithuanian Capital

Posted on 8 March 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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Last Tuesday, 5 March 2019, a Vilnius court sat in judgment over an appeal to the state-sponsored “Genocide Center” by Grant Arthur Gochin, a financial advisor in California who is of Litvak heritage and was himself born in South Africa (he did not come in for the trial but was represented by attorney Rokas Rudzinskas and academic specialist Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas). The request in effect asked the Genocide Center (formally “The Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania” or LGGRTC) to revisit their refusal to re-examine the historical certificate they issued whitewashing Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika. In support, the plaintiff submitted a big stack of documents from Lithuania’s own archives, and claimed that the Center’s conclusions ignore or misinterpret a whole series of documents and that they are biased in their justification of Noreika and taking into account only “positive aspects” of his activities. The Center explained away some documents signed by Noreika by using other documents that were signed by the German administration much later, but failed to properly name the criteria according to which some witnesses and documents are deemed important and others are rejected. Gochin’s lawyer noted that responsibility for crimes to humanity is not canceled out by the fact that the perpetrator held office and was following orders.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Events, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off

Three Issues for Yad Vashem Conference that Legitimizes “Genocide Center”

Posted on 19 November 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

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by Gershon Taitz (Vilnius)

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I would like to invite the participants of today’s Yad Vashem Conference in Jerusalem, “Jewish Leadership in Lithuanian Ghettos” to consider a number of issues concerning this conference. First, please be aware that Dr. A. Bubnys is the chief historian at the “Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania.” His center of activity promotes inaccurate and hostile memory of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

We all recall the controversies ignited by A. Bubnys in his book on the Šiauliai Ghetto (Shávler géto). The book was written in such a way as to give the impression that Jews perished principally because of the Jewish leadership in the ghetto, and not because of the German and Lithuanian forces who were the voluntary and enthusiastic perpetrators (a classic case of trying to blame the victims). This makes the Genocide Center’s participation in a Yad Vashem conference on the topic of forced Jewish “leadership” of the ghettos problematic, not least because of the conference’s topic being precisely that nominal Jewish leadership. Indeed, it happens here that blame for the Holocaust is deflected as far as possible on the forced Jewish “leadership” of the ghettos and the “Jewish police” in the ghettos.

Posted in Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Gerhson Taitz, Gersonas Taicas, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Siauliai ghetto, Yad Vashem, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Comments Off

Is Yad Vashem Legitimizing Vilnius “Genocide Center”?

Posted on 19 November 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

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Under Pressure of Israeli Foreign Ministry?

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

Its chief historian Dr. A. Bubnys is a major speaker; See DH review of his book on the Vilna Ghetto and report on Jewish community’s response to his publication on the Shavl (Šiauliai) Ghetto. Are pliant “Jewish academics” being flown in and wheeled out to provide cover for the newest chapters in Holocaust revisionism? These include East European state glorification of collaborators and denial of the outbreak of mass violence by the LAF and other “nationalist heroes” against Jewish neighbors before the onset of German administration in the last week of June 1941.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Arunas Bubnys, Christoph Dieckmann, Evaldas Balciunas, Grant Gochin, Israel and Eastern Europe, Israel and Lithuania, Israeli policy on Holocaust, Jonas Noreika, Yad Vashem + Lithuania | Comments Off

Mažvydas National Library Wants Us to Listen to Valiušaitis, a Denier of Škirpa’s Atrocities

Posted on 10 February 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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Lithuania’s Mažvydas National Library is curiously fostering two parallel cultures which have yet to engage each other. Up on the fifth floor, on the West side, an eminent Judaic studies scholar leads the Judaica Research Center (cosponsored by the Yivo institute in New York), and on the East side, journalist Vidmantas Valiušaitis leads the Adolfas Damušis Democracy Studies Center.

More on Mažvydas National Library; on Yivo’s history in Vilnius since 2011

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Mažvydas National Library (Issues Arising), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Adolfas Damušis Democracy Studies Center, Andrius Kulikauskas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), Mazvydas National Library, Musiskiai, Ruta Vanagaite, Vidmantas Valiušaitis, Yivo + Mazvydas, Yivo at Mazvydas Library, Yivo in Vilnius | Comments Off

Sad Error of Naming 2018 for Someone who “Just” Led a Pro-Nazi “Partisan Squad” in Lithuania in June and July of 1941

Posted on 7 December 2017 by Defending History

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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The national scandal unleashed by the Lithuanian Rūta Vanagaitė and the Jewish Efraim Zuroff via their statements about Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, is gradually losing momentum. The Seimas (parliament) went right ahead and declared the incoming year, 2018, to be The Year of Ramanauskas-Vanagas. That is sad. Three years ago, I wrote about this person’s activities in Druskininkai in 1941. Society back then was silent about it. It was only the desire of some politicians to glorify this personage that led to the aforementioned Lithuanian and Jewish commentators to talk about him. They spoke loudly and an antisemitic bubble burst. Vanagaitė’s statement had some inaccuracies. The very statement was taken as an insult by the mainstream. Public details about Zuroff’s statement were scarce. My 2014 article was among those details.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, New Britain, Connecticut: Plans to Glorify Alleged Nazi Collaborator?, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas Vanagas, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Forest Brothers in Lithuania, Ruta Vanagaite | Comments Off

The World Celebrates Professor Greimas With No Regard for His Victims

Posted on 3 November 2017 by Defending History

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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Renowned Lithuanian-French thinker Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917-1992) was more forthcoming than most about his dubious, or frankly, criminal behavior as a young man.

From his interviews we know that in 1940, he gave public speeches in support of Soviet annexation of Lithuania. And in 1941, he served as an editor for the newspaper Tėvynė in Šiauliai, which repeatedly called for ethnic cleansing of Jews from Lithuania.

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Mažvydas National Library (Issues Arising), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Algirdas Julius Greimas, Andrius Kulikauskas, Einsatzgruppen, Jonas Noreika, LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), Naujosios Biržų žinios, S.D. (Sicherheitsdienst), Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters (LLKS), Vilnius Gedminas Technical University | Comments Off

Documents Which Argue for Ethnic Cleansing (by Kazys Škirpa, Stasys Raštikis, Stasys Lozoraitis and Petras Klimas in 1940-1941 and by Birutė Teresė Burauskaitė in 2015)

Posted on 18 December 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N / H I S T O R Y

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2023 update: Readers experiencing difficulty accessing sources linked are referred to the archived version where original links are operative.

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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As of October 28, 2015, the home page of the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania has a link to an authorative statement by General Director Birutė Teresė Burauskaitė about Kazys Škirpa. She responds to a request for information by the City of Kaunas, which has a street in Škirpa’s name. Škirpa was Lithuania’s representative in Berlin, the leader of the Lithuanian Activist Front, organizer of Lithuania’s anti-Soviet rebellion and Prime Minister of Lithuania’s Provisional Government in 1941. In bold letters she emphasizes:

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, History, Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off

Public Shrines to a Holocaust Collaborator and a “Secret” Petition: A Summer’s Strange Media Circus

Posted on 1 September 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N / C O L L A B O R A T O R S G L O R I F I E D

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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In the midst of this past summer’s heatwave here in Lithuania, Delfi.lt, one of the most popular news portals in the land, exploded with discussions on commemorations and memorials for Nazi collaborators in our country. Rimvydas Valatka, a columnist for the portal and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, started it all with his article of 26 July. The “current events background” was the recent removal of the controversial Soviet-era statues of soldiers on Vilnius’s Green Bridge. Valatka, a veteran of Lithuanian journalism with the rarefied street-cred of a Declaration of Independence signatory, appealed for removal of the memorial plaque for Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika (“Generolas Vėtra”) from a central Vilnius library building, and wrote about a petition for its removal signed by a group of intellectuals and public figures, and addressed to the mayor of Vilnius as well as to the director of the relevant library (Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences), where the plaque hangs prominently in the heart of Lithuania’s capital.

The stone honoring Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika tops the lot on the facade of the Genocide Museum on Gedimino Boulevard in the Lithuanian capital, a stone’s throw from the nation’s parliament. When are we going to stop glorifying those who helped annihilate Lithuanian Jewry during the Holocaust? When is this going to come down?

Posted in Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust collaborators Glorified, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika (Generolas Vetra) | Comments Off

“The Naked Truth” on Lithuanian Television

Posted on 21 May 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

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The national Lithuanian television channel Lietuvos rytas TV recently (on May 4) broadcast a show by veteran talk-show host Rūta Grinevičiūtė (surname recently changed to Janutienė) called Nuoga Tiesa, “Naked Truth,” which posed the question, “Do you want the Jews to return again [sic] to Lithuania?” Viewers were invited to call in and/or vote by special telephone lines for Yes and No with a one euro toll per call. For that and a number of other reasons the entire program had something of the macabre about it, and although some of the guests made some important points, all of them seemed to miss certain glaring details which would have been the center of attention in the West.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Geoff Vasil, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Rūta Vanagaitė | Tagged Antisemitism in Eastern Europe, Antisemitism in Lithuania, Darius Kuolys, Geoff Vasil, Holocaust in Lithuania, Julius Panka, Ponar (Paneriai, Ruta Vanagaite, Shimon Gurevich, Simonas Gurevicius, Tomas Baranauskas | Comments Off

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Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania

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

Opinion | Books | Dr. Bubnys & Official State Holocaust Research in Lithuania | Red-Brown Commission | Genocide Center | Politics of Memory | Lithuania | History

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | GENOCIDE CENTER | KAUNAS: 2022 CAPITAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURE

“The hard-working people of Lithuania deserve much better than for their tax euros to be squandered by ultranationalist leaders on state glorification of Hitler accomplices.”

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

Local reports (generally lacking any inkling of the international uproar over adulation of Holocaust perpetrators): 15 min.lt; alfa.lt; alkas.lt; delfi.lt; lrt.lt; lzb.lt; respublika.lt

Algemeiner Journal is first foreign publication to cover the affair in reports of 15 April and of 22 April

see also: Arutz Sheva

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

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“Why does Lithuania keep doing this to itself?”

VILNIUS—In a shock to Western allies and the large international Litvak community, the speaker of Lithuania’s Seimas (Parliament) has nominated historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys to be the new director of the state-sponsored Genocide Center (reports in Delfi.lt, LRT, BalticsNews, etc).

UPDATES

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

Algemeiner Journal reports of 15 April and of 22 April

Background:

On 27 January, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021:

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OPINION | EVENTS | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | VILNIUS “GENOCIDE CENTER”

OUR TAKE ON THE LATEST IN THE 7 YEAR OLD NOREIKA SAGA

‘Sad Day for Lithuania, and for Honest Holocaust Commemoration in Years Ahead’

Does the ruling reflect a new East European Holocaust sensibility that holds that participation in the destruction of a country’s Jewish citizens during the Holocaust was some minute detail that must not interfere with making heroes out of the local perpetrators and collaborators?

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

by Gershon Taitz (Vilnius)

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

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

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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More on Mažvydas National Library; on Yivo’s history in Vilnius since 2011

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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O P I N I O N / H I S T O R Y

2023 update: Readers experiencing difficulty accessing sources linked are referred to the archived version where original links are operative.

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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O P I N I O N / C O L L A B O R A T O R S G L O R I F I E D

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

by Geoff Vasil

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**Scholars & journalists: When you use DH, please cite DH.**