This comment first appeared in The Times of Israel on 22 May 2013.
One of the predictable consequences of genocide is the spectacle of old cemeteries without relatives or descendants of the buried to care for the gravestones or the site. Some stones will fall, some will sink, and then some will just be taken as usable components for the foundations of houses, the ballast of roads or the walls of a basketball court.
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the following is the mutually accepted English text of the property restitution/compensation law passed by the Lithuanian Parliament on 21 June 2011, subsequently signed by the president, and coming into effect today, 1 December 2011. It is also available on the website of the Lithuanian parliament, in Lithuanian and in English (a Word doc version is also provided). [Update of 2012:Nina Bruskina’s paper in Lithuanian; in the event of future URL changes, the law can be searched via “Lietuvos Respublikos geros valios kompensacijos už žydų religinių bendruomenių nekilnojamąjį turtą įstatymas. Valstybės žinios, 2011, nr. 803897”.
LAW TEXT (translation)
Draft -XIP -968(4)
LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA
ON THE GOOD WILL COMPENSATION FOR THE IMMOVABLE PROPERTY OF JEWISH RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES
2011 Vilnius
The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,
An opposition party member of the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament) has leaked this memo (English translation here), dated 20 July 2010, which purports to be a circular letter from the deputy foreign minister, Sarunas Adomavicius, to the working group (names blocked out) of the ‘Fake Litvak’ Forum (the official name is the ‘Litvak Heritage Forum’). The Forum is viewed as a ploy to hijack Litvak identity and put it to use for government PR purposes.
The day it was announced, 15 July 2010, the prime minister’s chancellor boasted of ‘rich Litvaks’ having been found to finance it. Protests followed immediately from Holocaust Survivors of the ALJ, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Litvak Studies Institute and this website (see here). There is particular fear that it is to serve as cover to deflect attention from the ongoing Continue reading