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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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024
Blaming the Victims: Documents from a 20 Year Campaign to Defame and Decommemorate the Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisans of Lithuania
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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A June 2026 Plea to Germany: Please Honor the Memory of the Vilna Jewish Partisans & Preserve their Rapidly Disappearing Fort in the Forest
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | HISTORY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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OPINION
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Please ask your elected officials to contact the German embassy in your country:
Please rapidly mark, fence and protect the ground sacred to Holocaust survivors and their families that now abuts the forest training grounds of the new German Brigade arriving in the Lithuanian forests as part of NATO. The fort, where 100 Vilna Ghetto partisans found refuge and valiantly fought the Nazis, is disappearing by the day, used for late night partying by the barracks builders, and very soon, if not corrected, by thousands of German troops…
For decades, partisans veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922–2024) took thousands of visitors from around the world to this major historic site in the Lithuanian forest. What a splendid opportunity this is for genuine Holocaust education of the young German troops heading eastward. Video of Fania at the fort in 2007.
Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky showing us around the Jewish partisan fort, in her Vilna Yiddish, in 2007 (video). Her last request to future generations. DH’s section on the Jewish partisan fort (also in ascending chronological order).
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Respectfully calling on people of good will to honor the Vilna Jewish partisans who valiantly fought the Nazis. The Jewish partisans’ legacy has in recent years been besmirched by some powerful forces in Lithuania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Please do not remain silent about the German government’s failure to date to publicly commit to honoring, marking, fencing and preserving the still-striking remnants of the last Jewish partisan fort of the Vilna Ghetto partisans that — by the majestic hand of history — sits right next door in the forest to the German Army’s brand new Forty-Fifth Brigade arriving in Lithuania as part of NATO. The bulk of the soldiers haven’t even arrived yet, but builders of their barracks use the site and the underground wooden bunkers for partying and it is rapidly disappearing and becoming a place for used beer cans, firecracker tubes, and other party remnants.
“This ground was sacred to the last Holocaust survivors of Lithuania and far beyond. Will it now be honored by modern democratic Germany?”
Deeper damage to this precious historic site from the German Army’s arrival is already manifest. The deep-forest ambience has been shattered by vast woods clearing and road building not far. The access area is closed on days of shooting practice and a “danger” sign menaces would-be visitors. The sounds of silence are replaced by the sounds of the current German Army’s imminent arrival.
Powerful local forces have helped “fix things” via PR bonanza stunts like having German soldiers scrub an old cemetery elsewhere (with a rabbi flown in from Berlin officiating; where was the rabbi from Vilnius?). Truly very nice, but in this instance a lamentable deflection from the issue at hand. The latest.
Readers are asked to politely and respectfully contact German embassies and consulates internationally on the issue.
There is no suggestion the German Army (or government) has any ill intention here. They are perhaps being misled by a few select ultranationalist Lithuanian state agencies dedicated to “fixing the history” and their ersatz paid-for “official Jewish authorities” (and foreign figures addicted to junkets, honors, photo-ops and medals) who receive benefit from betraying the very people they are sacredly committed to represent. A major German elder statesman drafted a powerful statement, then withdrew it from publication under pressure from political friends in Lithuania.
Our take: Germany needs to stand up to the ultrnationalist Holocaust revisionist elements in the brigade-hosting government. This can still all easily be put right very rapidly. And what a magnificent opportunity for Holocaust education generally, and specifically, for the thousands of German troops arriving “back” in Lithuania. As of now, those we have encountered in Vilnius never heard of any Jewish partisan fort abutting their new forest training base. (Someone had tried to pivot the issue to old Jewish cemeteries which Lithuania has rightly protected by fencing, signs and law from 1990 onward.)
German citizens might ask themselves: Are we sending thousands of German troops “back” to Lithuania to help today’s far right destroy the last vestige of Jewish resistance to the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania?
Mini Photo Gallery
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky at one of the underground bunkers at the Jewish partisan fort outside Vilna in the forest where she resided from the day after her escape from the Vilna Ghetto on the morning of its liquidation (23 Sept. 1943) until the defeat of the Nazi occupiers in July 1944. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.
Ireland’s Ambassador Dónal Denham (left) and UK Ambassador Simon Butt visit the Jewish partisan fort in the forests of Lithuania, learning of its remarkable history in the annals of anti-Nazi resistance from survivor and veteran of the Jewish partisans Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (c. 2009). Photo: DefendingHistory.com
Germany’s Ambassador Hans-Peter Annan awarding Jewish partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky the president’s federal cross of merit at the German Embassy in Vilnius in 2009. Left to right: Dr. Shimon Alperovich (head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community), Ambassador Annan, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dovid Katz, then professor of Yiddish at Vilnius University and editor of DefendingHistory.com.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged 45th Brigade (Germany in Lihtuania), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Germany + Holocaust in Lithuania, Germany and the Holocaust, Jewish Labor Bund, Jewish partisan fort in Lithuania, Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot, Litauenbrigade, Nusach Vilna, Yivo
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Back in the News: Remnants of Lithuania’s Last anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort, Next Door to New German Army Brigade (Panzerbrigade 45)
[LAST UPDATE]
JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | DR. RACHEL MARGOLIS | BLAMING THE VICTIMS
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It was known as “the Jewish fort” (or “the Yiddish speaking fort”) within the network of anti-Nazi Soviet partisan forest enclaves (the only de facto resistance to Hitler’s occupation of Lithuania, then in alliance with Great Britain, the United States, and the other Allies). It’s 100 or so occupants were all Vilna Ghetto escapees whose families were murdered and who went on to survive, and to become decorated heroes of the free world in the anti-Nazi resistance.
Then, after the rise of free, democratic Lithuania in 1990/1991, they become major educators whose last wish was that the Jewish fort’s remnants be preserved.
Whether coincidence or by sheer majesty of history (or: Higher Powers), the beloved remnants of the Jewish partisan fort have ended up abutting the massive new training ground of the German Army’s 45th Panzer Brigade arriving in Lithuania in the democratic context of NATO and the free world. It is a magnificent opportunity for Germany, and the thousands of young troops being sent “back east” to be educated and educate others about the Holocaust in Lithuania and beyond. Including — the extraordinary saga of Jewish resistance.
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024) shows us where she and 99 other Jewish escapees from certain death in the Vilna Ghetto lived and fought the Nazis in this underground fort in the forest now right next door to the German Army’s new Brigade in Lithuania. Click on image for 2007 video. Fania explains that this was known as “the Jewish fort” within the wider partisan movement, and is so known in Holocaust resistance history. Yiddish was the everyday language of its 100 or so occupants.
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The new German Army 45th Brigade in Lithuania is right next door to the fort in the Rūdninkai forest (Yiddish: Rudnítsker vald)
Posted in Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Ambassador Donal Denham, Ambassador Simon Butt, German Embassy in Vilnius, German Holocaust remembrance, Germany and the Holocaust, Germany's 45th Battallion in Lithuania, Jewish World War II partisans, Maceva, Rudninkai Jewish partisan fort, S. Kanovicius (Kanovich)
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Updates to the New German Brigade Near the World War II Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania
EUROPE’S ONLY SURVIVING JEWISH PARTISAN FORT
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VILNIUS—There have been two new developments in the saga of Germany’s Forty-Fifth Armoured Brigade, to be established in the forests adjacent to the remains of Europe’s last Jewish partisan fort, where around one hundred escapes from the Vilna Ghetto lived and fought the Nazis and their local collaborators during the Holocaust. See report.
The 20 June updates:
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
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Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe
[LAST UPDATE (SEE AT END): 20 JUNE 2025]
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EASTERN EUROPE | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GERMANY | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—International media has reported in detail on last week’s military ceremonies in Vilnius celebrating the permanent installation of thousands of German soldiers as part of NATO forces in Lithuania, southernmost of the three Baltic republics. The new entity is “Germany’s 45th Armoured Brigade” (Panzerbrigade 45) that is also known as the “Lithuania Brigade”.
The Defending History community is a staunch supporter of the values and security needs of the European Union, NATO, the Western alliance of free and democratic nations, and has from day one condemned the medieval, barbaric February 2022 invasion and unleashing of mass death and destruction upon Ukraine by Putin’s Russian Federation forces. Our support includes reproducing a statement that has appeared for over a decade on p. 1 of DefendingHistory.com (right hand column). As stated there, adherence to the democratic values of the EU and the NATO alliance includes cherishing the free-speech right to criticize: efforts to rewrite Holocaust history by Eastern Europe’s ultranationalist far right; efforts to defame the victims, including Jewish partisans who fought valiantly against the Nazis; efforts to disseminate Double Genocide revisionism in the realm of Holocaust and World War II history; efforts to glorify Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators; efforts to curtail free speech by criminalizing or delegitimizing views that oppose these efforts.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Birgit Kraemer, Chancellor Merz, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Germany's "Lithuania Brigade", Germany's 45th Armoured Brigade, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Jewish partisans in Vilna, Mantautas Sulskis, NATO in Lithuania, Panzerbrigade 45, Rūdninkai Forest, Rūdninkai training ground, Rūdninkų giria, Rudnítsker vald
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Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism
OPINION | THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | YITZHAK ARAD | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—Everybody makes mistakes, even august, storied and splendid international organizations. As in personal affairs, so in conference rooms, the secret is in the ability to say so and make a change, remembering the adage attributed to Mark Twain, along the lines of it being much easier to fool a person than to get them to admit they have been fooled.
The Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany) has just allowed its vaunted name and logo to appear on the publicity for events in Palanga and Plunge, Lithuania organized by one of the major engines of East European Holocaust revisionism. That entity is the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes,” which local diplomats have long dubbed for short “the Red-Brown Commission” starting in 2008 when the Commission reacted with utter silence to prosecutors’ launching of absurd and cruel kangaroo pretrial war crimes investigations into two of Vilnius’s most beloved Holocaust survivors, Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024). Please skim through the saga.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Clemens Heni, Danny Ben-Moshe, Dov Levin, Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Studies, International Commission for the Evaluation, Joseph Melamed, Marc Radomsky, Red-Brown Commission, Ronaldas Racinskas, Yehuda Bauer
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Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation
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
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 Dr. Arunas Bubnys, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Kaniukai
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Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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The following email blast with its links to online sites, forthcoming events in Vilnius, and at its end, a link to an old and an out-of-context defamatory video extract on youtube, has been widely recirculated this week. It comes on the heels of the state Jewish museum’s ill-conceived event legitimizing the director of the state-funded Genocide Center, an institution that champions glorification of collaborators, defamation of victims and history revisionism in the far-right spirit of East European ultranationalism. See also the shameful longtime position of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” and Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Resource Page; Fania Brantsovsky section; summary of state prosecutors’ campaign of defamation; index of topics and videos posted at the time of her death, at age 102, last September, including a call for a formal state apology to her family and those of fellow Holocaust survivors who became heroes of the free world by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join up with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania. Fania’s last wish was for the “Jewish Partisan Fort” outside Vilnius to be restored and preserved for future generations. More on editor’s Facebook page (with discussion in the comments that follow).
[UPDATE OF 4 FEB. 2025: See now full translation of the text below, and further discussion on Dovid Katz’s Facebook page].
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Campaign against Jewish WW II partisans, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Genocide Center Vilnius
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja): 1922-2024
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | OBITUARIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | JEWISH PARTISAN HEROES DEFAMED BY VILNIUS PROSECUTORS
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky: “My last wish is that the Jewish Partisan Fort, where we lived, and where we fought the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania, be preserved and restored so future generations will know of our resistance against genocide, and so we honor all those who fell fighting for the freedom of all of us.”
Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: Saga of 2008. Call to preserve “Fania’s fort in the forest” for future generations.
See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section: how Vilna’s most beloved Yiddish icon was pursued by authorities hell bent on revising Holocaust history.
Update: See now the Following Fania project
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
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We Honor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) on her 102nd Birthday in Vilnius
by Dovid Katz
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Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: from the saga of 2008…
See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section
Update: See now the Following Fania project
Note: This page is a work in progress. A number of older documents, articles, photographs, and recordings remain to be digitized, catalogued, and posted.
Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky: “My last wish is that the Jewish Partisan Fort, where we lived, loved and fought the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania, be preserved and restored so future generations will know of our resistance against genocide, and so we honor all those who fell fighting for the freedom of all of us.”
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
Tagged Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Following Fania, Following Fania + Yiddish, Prosecution of Holocaust survivors, Vilna Jewish partisans
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In Honor of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) on her 100th Birthday (2022)
[LAST UPDATE]
by Dovid Katz
Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: from the saga of 2008…
See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section
Note: This page is a work in progress. A number of older documents, articles, photographs, and recordings remain to be digitized, catalogued, and posted.
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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Film, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Ambassador Donal Denham, Ambassador John Cloud, Ambassador Simon Butt, Dovid Katz, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Shimon Alperovich (Alperavicius), US Embassy's Joseph Bosky
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, State-Defamed Jewish World War II Partisan Hero, Turns 100 Today
BLAMING THE VICTIMS | FANIA BRANTSOVSKY SECTION | HISTORY | EVENTS | YIDDISH CULTURE | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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The following is a paste-in of today’s Facebook post by Dovid Katz marking Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky’s 100th birthday in Vilnius, Lithuania. The original, along with its Comments section is on FB, accompanied by a modest selection of photographs of Fania, and of Fania with Dovid and others over the years.
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Clockwise from upper left: Fania is at far left in family photo from 1932 or 1933 in front of her father’s shop on Vilna’s Zavalna St. (today Pylimo in Vilnius); Fania showing visitors the underground bunkers where she lived while fighting the Nazis in the Jewish partisan fort in the forest (now sinking into the ground, Fania’s last wish is that it be restored and preserved for posterity); Fania and fellow partisan veteran Chasia Langbord Shpanerflig sing the partisan hymn at a May 9th memorial; Fania bring honored at a banquet at the residence of the Irish ambassador to Lithuania, HE Dónal Denham in a pushback against state attempts to prosecute and defame her and other veterans of the Jewish partisans with ambassadors from Norway, Austria, France, the UK and other Western nations joining in; Fania in the Vilna Ghetto (1941-1943); with Dovid enjoying looking at some old Vilna Yiddish books together.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Film, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
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Chronicle of the Lithuanian Government’s Campaign to Blame Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Resistance
UPDATED MARCH 2017. See also (older, not updated) Responses page.
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
PREFACE
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.
A single public letter from the president could fix it all. Instantly.
The campaign of defamation results in permanent calumny in historians’ works, Wikipedia, and elsewhere (see below) that is more than a grave injustice to the Holocaust survivors targeted (and their families). It is a deliberate ultranationalist falsification of history in the spirit of the wider campaign to find fault with the victims and make heroes of the perpetrators. These are components of the movement to obfuscate the issues, and downgrade the Holocaust in the spirit of the Double Genocide movement and its central document, the 2008 Prague Declaration.
All but one of the accused survivors — most in their late eighties or nineties — were still alive (as of February 2016). Dr. Rachel Margolis passed away on 6 July 2015, having failed to fulfill her final wish of one last trip to her native Vilna. A single public letter of apology from the president or prime minister of Lithuania, accompanied by an apology from the state prosecutors, would be the minimal gesture of good will needed to repair the damage. Public defamation can only be (partly) repaired by public apology. Dr. Yitzhak Arad died in May 2021.
Moreover, the state has a splendid last chance to end its relationship with its own Holocaust survivors, after a 700 year history in Lithuania, on a rather higher note than police coming to look for aged women veterans of the heroic Jewish resistance in the forests of Lithuania.
During his own tenure before these events, Lithuania’s eminent late president (later prime minister) Algirdas Brazauskas, a champion of confronting historical truth with courage and dignity, awarded certificates of honor to the selfsame Jewish partisan veterans for the selfsame service in helping to liberate Lithuania from Nazism. . .
2006
22 April 2006. Article in Respublika accuses Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Holocaust survivor, resistance hero, veteran of the Israeli war of independence and long-time director of Yad Vashem, of being a war criminal on the basis of misquoted, decontextualized passages in his own 1979 book, The Partisan. [ADDENDUM of April 2014: One of the chief stone-throwers (final section) is A. Anušauskas, who is today a member of the state’s commission on Nazi and Soviet crimes. In 2006 he was “scientific editor” at the Genocide Center. Since 2008 he has been a member of parliament where he was for some years chair of the Committee on National Security and Defense.]
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2007
10 September 2007. Prosecutors in Lithuania confirm that their investigation of Holocaust survivor, anti-Nazi resistance hero and former director of Yad Vashem Dr. Yitzhak Arad, on suspicion of “crimes against humanity” had been initiated in May 2006. The “investigation” was based on an article in the antisemitic daily Respublika (22 April 2006), in which the special prosecutor and head of the Genocide Center are extensively quoted. In June 2006 the daily triumphantly proclaimed that prosecutors were acting on its earlier article. English summary. See below at 25 September 2008 for “conclusion” of the investigation and the 2010 report of the “Lithuanian Human Rights Association” . . . In 2014, ongoing defamation evident from Wikipedia entry.
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2008
29 January 2008. Article in the daily Lietuvos aidas that called on prosecutors to investigate Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dr Rachel Margolis. English translation.
6 April 2008. Professor Dov Levin of Jerusalem protests, returning his own earlier award to the president of Lithuania.
30 April 2008. The Embassy of the United States in Lithuania issues a certificate of appreciation, signed by Ambassador John A. Cloud, to Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky; presented by political officer Joseph Boski at a luncheon organized by the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad
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The Seven Simple Solutions to Irksome Lithuanian-Jewish Issues
Some Simple and Constructive Solutions to the Irksome “Jewish Issues” that Continue to Haunt the Lithuanian Government and Its Agencies
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NOTE: The original (2009) version of this document was constructed in close cooperation with the late Dr. Shimon Alperovich (1928-2014), elected head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania for many years. Revisions were discussed with him in detail until several days before his death in 2014. Naturally, he does not bear responsibility for the document’s annual updates since that time but his intellectual imprint on its spirit should not go uncredited.
1
Abandonment of the state’s financing of the campaign to obfuscate the Holocaust by means of its Double Genocide campaign, including “cooked” international events, conferences, film screenings and panel discussions; withdrawal of formal state support for the Prague Declaration and similar projects, closing down of the “red-brown commission” and the inauguration of an atmosphere of full freedom for citizens and organizations to support alternatives including the Seventy Years Declaration. Holocaust history to be included in historically accurate proportionality in the Genocide Museum and all relevant tourist locations that deal with genocide. Abandonment of the extensive state sponsored program to glorify the local Holocaust perpetrators of 1941, including the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF), whose leaflets indicated desire to murder the country’s Jewish citizens even before arrival of Nazi forces. Rapid correction of the mischaracterization of the early local perpetrators as supposedly heroic rebels in the new basement room on the Holocaust in the Genocide Museum.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad
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Curious History of a Yiddish Professorship at Vilnius University & its “Vilnius Yiddish Institute”
LAST UPDATE
YIDDISH AND JUDAIC STUDIES MANIPULATED FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE | BORNS JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY | RICHARD MAULLIN
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Its Prehistory (1990-1999), History (1999-2010) and Posthistory (2010-2018) from the Year of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence Onward
CAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES STILL WRITE INDIVIDUALS OUT OF HISTORY IN POST-SOVIET SPACE? DO VILNIUS UNIVERSITY’S DEANS AND RECTOR APPROVE OF THE PRACTICE? CAN A PAST PROFESSOR WITH A PERFECT RECORD OVER 11 YEARS (NO COMPLAINTS, NO INCIDENTS) BE WRITTEN OUT OF THE UNIVERSITY’S HISTORY AND DEFAMED IN THE UNIVERSITY’S NAME ON ORDERS OF SOMEONE AT THE “INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE NAZI AND SOVIET REGIMES IN LITHUANIA” (THE “RED-BROWN COMMISSION“)?
A “for the record” page in progress, developed in response to repeated public statements by the current director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, a member of the state-sponsored Commission on Nazi and Soviet crimes, claiming that Defending History’s editor (a) was never a professor at the university, (b) if he was an elementary Yiddish alphabet teacher paid by some surfers in California, he got fired for not turning up to work. Further documents are being processed for inclusion in the bizarre but curiously telling chapter of the history of Yiddish Studies in the 21st century. The political manipulation (ranging from West European far-left to East European far-right) of Yiddish-less “Yiddish” is a theme in the final chapter of Yiddish and Power (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) by the Yiddishist in question, Dovid Katz.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Free Speech & Democracy, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Richard Maullin, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Borns Jewish Studies Program (Indiana), Céline Maullin (Wharton), Dovid Katz, Michèle Tamar Maullin, Nathalie Maullin Nathanson, Prof. Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University), Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish in Vilnius
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Turns 96 in Vilnius
Happy 96th Birthday to Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky!
אַ ליכטיקן געבאָרנטאָג, טײַערסטע פאַניע יאָכעלעס בראַנצאָווסקי!
Posted in Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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Text of Irish Ambassador Dónal Denham’s 2008 Speech at Brantsovsky Reception is Released for the Record
DOCUMENTS | IRELAND | BLAMING THE VICTIMS?
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Nearly a decade after 
HE Dónal Denham’s 3 June 2008 historic reception for Fania Brantsovsky, a hero of the Holocaust-era anti-Nazi Jewish partisan resistance in Lithuania, held at the Irish Ambassador’s Residence in Vinius, the text of his speech has been released. It appears below. See our report on the June 2008 event. Historical note: Defending History believes it was the first time since collapse of the Soviet Union that Western embassies in one of the new democracies saw a need to honor a person who was being unjustly targeted by state prosecution services and other national elites. The American, Austrian, British, French, German, Norwegian and other embassies followed the Irish lead.
Posted in Ambassador Dónal Denham, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Ireland, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
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Full Transcript of the “Fania Brantsovsky Witch Hunt Ceremony” on Lithuania’s Independence Day
OPINION | DOCUMENTS | BLAMING THE VICTIMS? | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | VILNIUS GENOCIDE CENTER | ANTISEMITISM | PRO-NAZI MARCHES | VILNIUS MARCHES
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VILNIUS—This year’s March 11th independence day march here last month was again granted the route of highest prestige, from Cathedral Square, up the whole of the capital’s main thoroughfare, Gedimino Boulevard, and ending at Parliament Square. Defending History’s eyewitness report recounted this year’s “detour” to the presidential palace for the bizarre ceremony of attacking Lithuania’s oldest Holocaust survivor, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja), 95 next month, one of the Jewish partisans subjected to defamation by the state’s campaign of Holocaust revisionism that has included a “blame the victims” components that started eleven years ago.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST (ONLY JEWISH) VETERANS OF THE ANTI-NAZI PARTISANS; RENEWED 2017 CAMPAIGN AGAINST FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Documents, Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arunas Eifirdas, Fania Jocheles Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish partisans, Sakalas Gorodeckis, Vilnius neo-Nazi marches
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State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” Issues Document that is “2017’s Jew-Witch Hunt” Against 95 Year Old Holocaust Survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky
OPINION | DOCUMENTS | BLAMING THE VICTIMS? | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | VILNIUS GENOCIDE CENTER | ANTISEMITISM
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by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—The following (text below) is a translation from Lithuanian of the 2 March 2017 letter from the state-sponsored Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania (widely known as the Genocide Center) to a nationalist group that put on this year’s March 11th Independence Day neo-Nazi march, with authorities’ permission, in the center of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. The group had complained about Lithuania’s president, Dalia Grybauskaite, having granted an award on February 16th to Lithuania’s oldest Holocaust survivor, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, soon to turn 95, for her work in the field of Holocaust education. The president’s office had referred the complaint to the Genocide Center which issued this letter (facsimile of the original below). The correspondence was then read out at a bizarre ceremony that some observers thought bore the hallmarks of a 2017 “Jew-witch hunt” when the Independence day festivities announced a detour to the presidential palace to read out the various letters and condemn Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, who is the only one of her family to survive the Holocaust precisely because she escaped the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943 and joined up with the anti-Nazi Soviet partisans, the only force seriously challenging Hitler’s rule of Lithuania.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, EU, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arvydas Anusauskas, Dalia Grybauskaite, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Brantsovsky, Genocide Center Vilnius, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Vilna Ghetto
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Over 500 Neo-Nazis Granted Center of Vilnius for March 11th Parade; A Tirade Against Holocaust Survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, 95
[last update 14 March 2017]
HUMAN RIGHTS | ANTISEMITISM | NEO-NAZI MARCHES | IN VILNIUS | KAUNAS | RIGA
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by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—A six-person monitoring group assembled by Defending History was the only human rights team at this year’s March 11th neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius. DH’s monitors were Eveldas Balčiūnas, Dovid Katz, Julius Norwilla, Ruta Ostrovskaja, Jacob Piliansky, and Julia Rets. Two senior longtime annual observers, both major figures in Lithuania’s Jewish community for over half a century, Milan Chersonski and Prof. Pinchos Fridberg, were prevented by health issues from monitoring the event this year.
For years Defending History has asked that the marchers’ freedom of speech be respected at venues away from the center of the capital on the nation’s independence day. The granting of “that time and place” (only since 2008) conveys a sense of legitimization by both the municipality and national government, which are sometimes thought to be playing a “double game” by facilitating the honoring of Holocaust perpetrators locally, alongside commemorations for the victims for foreign consumption. At least two Western ambassadors were “quietly” among the observing crowds.
Photo Galleries:
Evaldas Balčiūnas; Julius Norwilla; Julia Rets; Alkas.lt; Delfi.lt. Did “mainstream media” coverage avoid imaging swastikas, other fascist symbols, and Hitler salutes?
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Swastikas in Lithuania, Vilnius, Vilnius Jewish Public Library
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