History
Neo-Nazis, Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators & Spewing Racism, Again Gifted Center of Kaunas on Lithuania’s Cherished Feb 16th Independence Day
Letter from a German Soldier in Kaunas, 29 June 1941
DOCUMENTS | HISTORY
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by Andreas Kuck
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The following letter, presented in German facsmile of the original and in a draft English translation, was sent by German soldier Heinrich Sandt (1908 — 19??) from Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, on 29 June 1941 (the letter is both dated and stamped with the date). He was a member of the 10th Company of Infantry Regiment 89 (later Grenadier Regiment 89). He wrote the letter to his wife Elisabeth about what he witnessed in Kaunas. The 89th appears to have crossed the Nemunas (Nieman River) on 25 June 1941.
Additional Reading Suggestions for Participants in a Feb. 2017 Yivo Course
[updated]
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The following list has been compiled at the request of several students in a course on Lithuanian Jewry and the Holocaust in Lithuania to be held at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York in February 2016. It is strictly unofficial, unconnected to the program, and was compiled in Vilnius to complement the course’s own excellent reading list.
Lithuanian Jewish Culture and History
The Holocaust in Lithuania
“Double Genocide” & Other 21st Century Debates
Defending History Reference Pages
Simon Malkes Perpetuates Memory of Vilna Rescuer Karl Plagge
MEMOIRS | BOOKS | HISTORY
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by Simon Malkes (Paris)
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I was born in 1927 in the city whose official name was then Wilno, Poland (historically Vilna, today’s Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania). When I was fourteen, the Nazis took over the city, began murdering its Jewish population and set up the Vilna Ghetto. My own survival is due to my having been taken as a teenage repairman of German military vehicles at the plant known as HKP (Heereskraftfahrpark or Army Motor Vehicle Repair Park) on Subotsh Street (today’s Subačiaus). That one enterprise was under the directorship of Major Karl Plagge (1897–1957), a righteous gentile who did everything he could to protect as many Jewish workers as possible from the huge murder machine. Famously, shortly before the Nazi flight from the Soviet army in the summer of 1944, he gave a coded warning to his workers about a need for imminent escape.
Conference on East European Holocaust Opens in Warsaw
Conference in Warsaw, 5–7 December 2016:
Conference Features Omer Bartov, Christoph Dieckmann, Dan Michman, Antony Polonsky, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Saulius Sužiedėlis, Rūta Vanagaitė, Efraim Zuroff, and Other Major Specialists on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe
Expectations rising that the Lithuanian government sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (three of whose members are speaking) may now publicly call for (1) research (and acknowledgment of extant research and testimony) on massive “pre-German violence” in dozens of towns in the last week of June 1941; (2) written state apologies to defamed Holocaust survivors Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky, Pinchos Fridberg, Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed; (3) dismantling of public-space shrines, street names, university lecture halls etc that honor Holocaust collaborators; (4) repeal of the 2010 “red-brown jailtime law” that effectively criminalizes free debate; (5) abandonment of official adherence to 2008 Prague Declaration (and acknowledgment of the need for consideration also of the points made in the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration).
Is Eastern European “Double Genocide” Revisionism Reaching Museums?
HISTORY | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | MUSEUMS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED
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by Dovid Katz
This paper appeared today in Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, published by Taylor and Francis.
ABSTRACT: In contrast to twentieth-century Holocaust Denial, the most recent assault on the narrative of the genocide of European Jewry has emanated from a sophisticated revisionist model known as Double Genocide, codified in the 2008 Prague Declaration. Positing “equality” of Nazi and Soviet crimes, the paradigm’s corollaries sometimes include attempts to rehabilitate perpetrators and discredit survivors. Emanating from pro-Western governments and elites in Eastern Europe in countries with records of high collaboration, the movement has reached out widely to the Holocaust Studies establishment as well as Jewish institutions. It occasionally enjoys the political support of major Western countries in the context of East-West politics, or in the case of Israel, attempts to garner (eastern) European Union support. The empirical effects to date have included demonstrable impact on museums, memorials and exhibits in Eastern Europe and beyond.
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The demise of twentieth-century-style Holocaust denial in mainstream Western society is aptly symbolized by David Irving’s loss to Deborah Lipstadt in the London High Court in 2000. But around the same time, a new and more irksome method of writing the Holocaust out of history was emerging under the radar, this time without necessarily denying any of the historical events or a single death. Particularly in Eastern Europe, it was being forged with state funding and more subtle powers of persuasion in academia, the media, the arts and international diplomacy.
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Vanagaitė and Zuroff’s “Mūsiškiai”
[last update]
For the first time, a Lithuanian author teamed up with an Israeli Holocaust scholar in search for the truth about widespread local enthusiasm, seventy-five years ago, for mass murder of civilian neighbors, and today’s failures in coming to grips with that history, in a land of hundreds of Jedwabnes. A genuine historic advance in Lithuanian-Jewish relations is seen in the startling partnership of Rūta Vanagaitė and Dr. Efraim Zuroff in Vanagaitė’s Mūsiškiai: Kelionė su priešu (“Our People: Journey with an Enemy”), published in Vilnius in January 2016. See also the media tracking page on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Operation Last Chance website.
English Lithuanian German Polish Russian
The following listing of coverage by language (English, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish) is far from exhaustive. The humongous reaction needs to be studied in its own right.
Nov. 2017 Update: Renewed media conflagration launched by the author’s 26 October 2017 PR rollout of multiple initiatives, two of which were directly relevant to the legacy of Mūsiškiai.
Will the EU, the OSCE and the Council of Europe Ask Latvia to Revoke the 1998 Declaration?
OPINION | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | LATVIA | ANNUAL WAFFEN SS MARCHES IN RIGA
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by Aleksandr Kuzmin (Riga)
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On 29 October 1998, a few weeks after the parliamentary elections, the outgoing Parliament of Latvia had adopted the Declaration on Latvian Legionnaires in the World War II. The vote was as follows: 50 ayes, 8 nays, 3 abstentions.
The text contains several questionable statements. Those include claiming that “The aim of soldiers who were drafted into the Legion or who joined it voluntary was to protect Latvia from the restoration of Stalin’s regime” and asking the government to “prevent insults against the honour and dignity of Latvian soldiers.” To make it clear — the ones whose reputation was intended to be defended were Nazi collaborators, voluntarily or not. And the intention was pretty obvious — as the rapporteur MP, Mr. Mauliņš, said before the vote, “this decision will be our position towards our soldiers who truly fought for the independence of Latvia”.
August and September 2016 Memorials for Destroyed Jewish Communities
Summer and Fall 2016: 75th Anniversary
of the Nazis’ annihilation, with vast local collaboration, of Lithuania’s Jews in the towns, villages, provinces; implementation of ghettoization and mass murder in the cities.
Perhaps among the simplest, most minimalist measures of a municipality’s sincerity (beyond PR bonanzas, photo-ops and legitimizations via useful foreigners): (a) Modest town-center information board on the origins, history, culture, contributions and (true) fate of the town’s Jewish citizens; (b) Rapid removal of any local shrines, street names, museum tributes etc. to the local collaborators and murderers. “You just can’t make heroes out of the killers and expect to cover it up with some annual PR event for the foreigners.”
Language and respect for the victims: In addition to Lithuanian and English, will new memorial texts (including those at forest mass graves and old cemeteries) continue to include Yiddish, the language of 100% of the murdered Jews in all these towns? For many years, Lithuania has had a uniquely admirable record in this regard.
Some High Latvian Politicians Think the Waffen SS Fought for Freedom
OPINION | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | LATVIA | ANNUAL WAFFEN SS MARCHES IN RIGA
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by Aleksandrs Feigmanis (Riga)
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There are here in Latvia some high-ranking Latvian politicians who actually believe that the country’s Waffen SS fighters fought for freedom of their country. Every year on the 16th of March Latvian nationalists gather at the Freedom Monument in the heart of Riga, the nation’s capital, and in the cemetery at Lestene, a village some seventy-two kilometers from Riga, to remember and honor (honor!) the living and dead veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen SS.
Established by order of Adolf Hitler on the 10th of February 1943, they fought for Nazi Germany against the Red Army on the Volkhov front near Leningrad, and later in Great River region, Kurzeme (Kurland), in Poland, Germany and elsewhere.
Although the alarming series of annual events commemorating and glorifying the Latvian SS Volunteer Legion events are now officially non-governmental, some MPs and even ministers do not hesitate to not only participate publicly, setting an example for the nation’s youth, but also to publicly refer to Waffen SS legionnaires as heroes and national freedom fighters. Had Hitler won the war, there would have been no Latvia left to become free in 1991. By swearing and oath to Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime, and then in fact delaying the liberation of the concentration camps by the Allies, they were pawns of the Nazis who do not deserve to be glorified by a modern, democratic member of the European Union and NATO.
Vilnius City Council “Defers” Decision on Street Honoring Hitler Collaborator
[LAST UPDATE]
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I24’s 14 July 2016 report. Background in DH on British-born city council member, Mark Harold Splinter, who proposed the change (his statement in English). Samples from elsewhere in Lithuania. Wider issue in Eastern Europe. Within “Double Genocide” theory. Related 24 July 2016 report by JTA.
FOR MORE BACKGROUND ON KAZYS ŠKIRPA (CENTER) SEE DH ARTICLES BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS, AND MILAN CHERSONSKI; PROF. T. SNYDER’S BLOODLANDS: “Škirpa used this suffering in his radio broadcasts to spur mobs to murder. Some 2,500 Jews […]” … (p. 192)
Is There Still A Breeding Ground for Ustaša in Croatia?
OPINION | CROATIA | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED
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by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud/Belgium)
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Croatia is a nation that has been bathed in blood during numerous conflicts, as the victim of the odious Serbian aggression during the recent civil war, and for its football team proudly wearing the red and white checkered reproduction of the national flag. Happily, it is nowadays chiefly known as a tourist destination.
Joseph Levinson’s 1990s Map of Lithuanian Mass-Murder Sites is Released by Family
DOCUMENTS | HISTORY | LITHUANIA | JOSEPH LEVINSON
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VILNIUS—The Vilnius-based family of the late pioneering historian of the Lithuanian Holocaust, Joseph Levinson (1917–2015) has today released the map of Lithuanian mass-grave sites where the country’s Jewish population was annihilated, mostly in 1941. The map appeared in Levinson’s 1997 Book of Sorrow, but had not been released separately, and has occasionally been overlooked by later historians, who have naturally been able to add to the roughly 200 sites discovered, visited, detailed and mapped by Levinson in the 1990s. In addition to the image below, it is now available as PDF. More on Levinson’s life and books can be found at the website www.JosephLevinson.com. Defending History has a Joseph Levison section.
In Reponse to the Media: 9 July 2016
Western Mainstream Media Fails to Mention that East European Allies of the West are Investing in Glorification of Hitler’s Local Collaborators
Huffington Post Piece on Stepan Bandera Worship in Ukraine Omits his Organization’s Responsibility for Hundreds of Thousands of Murders of Poles and Jews; Landmark Historical Book on Bandera Still Goes Unmentioned by Most Mass Media
Defending History Brings Results
VILNIUS—Five years ago in 2011, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust on 23 June 1941 and the following days — nationalist murderers killed thousands of Jewish neighbors before the first German forces arrived or assumed control — the state sponsored an array of activities honoring the “rebels” (an historic nonsense, the Soviet occupying forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion, the largest in human history, not the local Jew-killers).
Professor Dov Levin’s Findings on the Outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust
DOCUMENTS | HISTORY
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The following is the first column of page 898 of Professor Dov Levin’s entry, “Lithuania,” in volume 3 of Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Israel Gutman, editor-in-chief; published by Macmillan, New York, and Collier Macmillan, London, 1990, in cooperation with Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem). Further reading on the subject. Eyewitness testimonies.
Lithuanian Prosecutor Writes to Jewish Community Head on Alleged Holocaust Perpetrators in Malát (Molėtai)
DOCUMENTS | LITHUANIA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GENOCIDE CENTER | OPINION
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VILNIUS—The website of Lithuania’s official Jewish Community today published an English translation of a 2 March 2016 letter (original here) sent by Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevičius in reply to a letter from community chairperson Faina Kukliansky. The text of the translation published today follows. The correspondence relates to alleged perpetrators in the northeastern Lithuanian town Malát (Molėtai), where an international commemoration is planned for August 2016.
For other recent interactions with the prosecutor’s office, see our 3 March 2016 report on another request, that for release of (or action regarding) the list of several thousand names of persons that the Genocide Center now concedes were potentially Holocaust perpetrators.
A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery Revisited
HISTORY | PIRAMÓNT | CEMETERIES | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION
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by Sid (Shnayer) Leiman
The following is a reprint, with Professor Leiman’s permission, of his essay originally published on 14 January 2016 in The Seforim Blog. His October 2015 essay on the current plans for a convention center in the heart of the same cemetery is available here. He is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and Literature at Brooklyn College in the City University of New York.
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A: The Photograph
1: R. Menahem Manes Chajes (1560-1636)
2: R. Shaul Katzenellenbogen (ca. 1770-1825)
3: R. Moshe, Dayyan of Vilna (ca. 1670-1740)
4: R. Hillel b. Yonah (d. 1706)
5: R. Moshe Darshan (d. 1726)
6: R. Yaakov Kahana (d. 1826)
7: R. Eliyahu Hasid (d. 1710)
8: R. Yosef b. Elyah (d. 1718)
B: A Visit to the Old Jewish Cemetery in 1940
NOTES
DEDICATION OF THIS ESSAY TO R. KHAYKL LUNSKI
We Shall Never Forget Kazimierz Sakowicz’s “Ponary Diary”
BOOKS | OPINION | LITHUANIA | HISTORY
by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud/Belgium)
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Ponary Diary, 1941 — 1943. A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder. by Kazimierz Sakowicz. Edited by Yitzhak Arad. Foreword by Rachel Margolis. Yale University Press: New Haven and London 2005.
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It goes without saying that a book of eyewitness Holocaust testimony penned at Lithuania’s largest mass grave site in the years 1941 to 1943, and first published in English in 2005, does not lose its importance for those who have not read it even a decade later; even if many other, much less important books, sport a more recent date of publication. Moreover, given the Lithuanian government’s campaign against the scholar who rediscovered and first published the manuscript in the 1990s, and against the scholar who edited the English edition cited above (both as part of its campaign against Jewish partisan survivors), the poignancy and human interest are even greater. It is indeed a most appropriate time to pay tribute to that rediscoverer, Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921—2015), who passed away in Rehovot, Israel last summer, without realizing, in her nineties, her dying wish of visiting her native Vilna one last time, because of her fear of prosecutors’ threats and intimidation.
Vilnius Prosecutor Skirts Key Question: Will the List of Alleged Holocaust Perpetrators be Made Public?
LITHUANIA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GENOCIDE CENTER | OPINION
by Dovid Katz
VILNIUS—An array of local observers, speaking as usual off the record here, declared themselves “in shock” over the official response to the Jewish Community released by Prosecutor General Rimvydas Valentukevičius yesterday, dealing with widespread requests that the state’s Genocide Center — with which his Prosecutor General’s office has closely cooperated on Holocaust issues for many years — release the list of around two thousand names of alleged Holocaust murderers that it recently announced it had compiled, drawing international press attention. Over the years, the Center has been critiqued by the Wiesenthal Center and by various authors in Defending History for its alleged history-distorting antics; Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas are among the boldest challengers of the Center’s moral integrity. (See also DH’s page on the Genocide Center, and on the museum which it directs in central Vilnius.)
The Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel has long maintained an estimate of 23,000 local perpetrators involved in the killing. Thousands were listed on the Association’s website until June 2009 when the Israeli Foreign Ministry, under pressure from Lithuanian counterparts, itself harshly pressured the Association’s then chairperson to remove the list from its website. But it continues to circulate widely both on the internet and its fuller form is preserved in Joseph Melamed’s 1999 book, Crime and Punishment (Tel Aviv 1999), where the lists of alleged killers are organized by region and town.