Human Rights

Dissenting Academic Rapidly Replaced with Foreign Stand-in at the Jerusalem Book Fair; Dr Rachel Margolis Betrayed Again


After authoring the book on Litvak culture for the Lithuanian section at the Jerusalem Book Fair, the editor of this website declined to attend to chair the Yiddish culture session, when he was asked not to bring to the fair Dr Rachel Margolis, resident in Rechovot; she is one of the heroic Jewish partisans defamed by the Double Genocide industry.

The Lithuanian government unit running these affairs rapidly replaced him with the Yiddish professor from the Borns Jewish Studies program at Indiana University (Bloomington).

The ‘Book Fair Affair’ was widely reported. See: Haaretz: ‘When Lithuania was Yiddishland’ by Raphael Ahren; also: comments by Milan Chersonski, editor of the Jewish community’s periodical, Jerusalem of Lithuania: ‘It’s not just about the Jerusalem Book Fair’ (Jan-March 2009); May 2010 update on Dr Margolis’s situation here.

More details here on the ‘Book Fair Affair’ and the further cooperation of the Borns Jewish Studies program with the nationalist establishment in Vilnius.

UPDATES TO JUNE 2011 SEE HERE


Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dissenting Academic Rapidly Replaced with Foreign Stand-in at the Jerusalem Book Fair; Dr Rachel Margolis Betrayed Again

Parliamentarians Explain that Red-Brown Criminalization Law is Necessary to ‘equate the crimes of Soviet Genocide with the Nazi Genocide’


Delfi.lt reports that ‘in the Lithuanian legal system, acts regarding the the crimes of Soviet genocide, i.e. their denial or justification, are not criminalized, and, experts say, this is an obstacle in attempting to equate the crimes of Soviet genocide with the Nazi genocide’.  Full English translation.  BNS’s English summary.


Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off on Parliamentarians Explain that Red-Brown Criminalization Law is Necessary to ‘equate the crimes of Soviet Genocide with the Nazi Genocide’

Human Rights Advocate Andrius Navickas is ‘put inside the Jew and the Gay’ on Page 1 of Vakaro Zinios (Evening News)


After human rights advocate and journalist Andrius Navickas lodged a protest against the publication of the antisemitic and homophobic cartoon, a caricature of his face and body was inserted into the ‘Jews and Gays control the world’ cartoon and published on the front page of Vakaro zinios. It appeared along with the article ‘What is the Gay Manifesto?’  English translation.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Media Watch, News & Views | Comments Off on Human Rights Advocate Andrius Navickas is ‘put inside the Jew and the Gay’ on Page 1 of Vakaro Zinios (Evening News)

Parliamentary Proposal to Curtail Free Speech that would Disagree with Red-Brown Equivalence; 3 Years Imprisonment Envisaged


Proposal 154(1), registered by the Seimas (parliament) of Lithuania, would impose up to three years of imprisonment for one who ‘denies, severely diminishes or justifies the genocide accomplished by Communism or Fascism’ etc.  English translation. 9 June 2009 summary.


Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views | Comments Off on Parliamentary Proposal to Curtail Free Speech that would Disagree with Red-Brown Equivalence; 3 Years Imprisonment Envisaged

Vilna Ghetto Victims Substituted for War Criminals List in the Baltic Times; VYI Chief calls the Association of Lithuanian Jews ‘Extreme Right-Wingers’


Part of a list of Jewish victims of the Vilna Ghetto (including fallen resistance hero Yechiel Sheinboim) appears in the Baltic Times instead of the captioned list of alleged Nazi-allied murderers (zoom-in).

The young foreign reporter was wholly innocent; a still unidentified source provided the wrong list. An obscure and ambiguous correction appeared the following week.

Moreover, director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute Sarunas Liekis is quoted (misquoted?) in the article (column 2), as calling the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world (the ALJ in Tel Aviv) ‘extreme right-wingers’, adding that ‘scholars don’t talk to them’. Although now aged, these survivors’ ranks still include prominent Holocaust scholars.

The Baltic trend to delegitimize Holocaust survivors and their supporters is part of the wider series of attempted conceptual realignments deemed ‘necessary’ to propagate the Double Genocide bandwagon, and obfuscation of the Holocaust, within the context of regional unltranationalism.


Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute | Comments Off on Vilna Ghetto Victims Substituted for War Criminals List in the Baltic Times; VYI Chief calls the Association of Lithuanian Jews ‘Extreme Right-Wingers’

Student Asked ‘Did the Jews pay you to do this topic?’ at Thesis Defense in Vilnius


A student was asked at the oral defense of his/her thesis: ‘Did the Jews pay you to do this topic?’ There was no comment from any committee member, and no written protest from the student’s supervisor or sponsoring department. Note: The student’s topic had no connection to Holocaust issues.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, News & Views | Comments Off on Student Asked ‘Did the Jews pay you to do this topic?’ at Thesis Defense in Vilnius

Paper Claims the Jews are Changing Lithuanian Law to Take Away Culture Ministry Building


Headline and image from page 2 of Vakaro zinios: a photo of the Culture Ministry building, with the caption and article suggesting that ‘the Jews’ are working to take it away from the government. The article is headed ‘Lithuanian law being corrected by the Jews’ with the word ‘Jews’ in rather large type.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, News & Views | Comments Off on Paper Claims the Jews are Changing Lithuanian Law to Take Away Culture Ministry Building

Rachel Margolis Honored in Tel Aviv


A certificate of appreciation for Dr Rachel Margolis, issued by Great Britain’s Lord Janner of Braunstone, was delivered at the Dr Rachel Margolis event chaired today at Leivick House in Tel Aviv by its director, composer Daniel Galay.

The keynote speaker was Israeli ambassador to Latvia and Lithuania, Chen Ivri Apter, who awarded Dr Margolis a certificate of merit from the Israeli embassy in Riga. Tel Aviv schoolchildren who study Yiddish with Hannah Pollin-Galay presented a cultural program of song, and a gift of flowers to Dr Margolis. Other speakers included professors Israel Bartal, Dov Levin (Jerusalem) and Dovid Katz (Vilnius).

Images: Dr Margolis addresses the audience. After the event. Dr Margolis with Ambassador Apter. Photos by Leyzer Burko. Leivick House report on the event.

Posted in Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Events, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Litvak Affairs, Lord Janner of Braunstone, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs | Leave a comment

Front Page Image of the Head of the Jewish Community with a Soviet-era Abacus


Image from the front page of the daily Vakaro zinios: a photomontage of the elected 80 year old chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania and a Soviet-era abacus.

The headline and accompanying article on p. 4 suggest that ‘the Jews’ are plotting to expropriate money from the country.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, News & Views, Shimon Alperovich (1928 – 2014) | Comments Off on Front Page Image of the Head of the Jewish Community with a Soviet-era Abacus

Seminars in Secret at the Annual Summer Program in Yiddish when the Topic is Holocaust Obfuscation


Seminars on Holocaust Obfuscation had to be held in private apartments during the Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature. [UPDATES added in later months as these materials appeared: Memoirs have been published by  Julia Blaukopf (Photographic Interiors, Pennsylvania); Jana Hock (Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch); Michael Cohen (more recent article here); Josh Markovitz (both UCLA). There have been comments in the Guardian and the Nation.]

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute staff list distributed to summer course students was purged of staff who spoke out publicly on behalf of the accused survivors and against ‘Double Genocide’. Lectures were convened at private apartments on August 10, 17, 19, 20 (more details at: Events). Image from 17 August; first and last slides; slide on European Parliament issues; more at Jamie Ehrenpreis’s Facebook siteGroup of participants after the 19 Aug. presentation; more by J. Ehrenpreis here.

Austrian Holocaust museum volunteer Adalbert Wagner set up power-point facilities, generously lent by the Green House Holocaust Museum. The organization of these lectures was assisted by VYI summer course participants  Dr Judy Freier, Dr Ilya Levin, Prof Abraham Lichtenbaum, Daniel Nemenyi, Dr Shimon Samuels, Berti Wagner. Larry Mandel, Daniel Nemenyi and  Martina Ravagnan for opened up their homes to one lecture each.

It is thought that the ‘Dirty Tricks Department’ of the Lithuanian government unit aiming to manipulate Jewish issues is planning for the Yiddish institute to become a PR tool of the government, with the Yiddish professor of Bloomington, Indiana brought over summertime and for select events to provide the necessary Yiddish Studies Cover for several weeks a year.


UPDATES HERE


Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Seminars in Secret at the Annual Summer Program in Yiddish when the Topic is Holocaust Obfuscation

Rachel Margolis turns 88


also marked Dr Rachel Margolis’s 88th birthday. Dr Margolis, anti-Nazi partisan veteran, historian and biologist, lives in Rechovot, and feels unable to return to Vilnius because of the situation. Birthday greetings at Responses (→ 28 Oct 2009, II). [Added Sept 2010: See now the later report of 27 January 2010 on the letter sent by five senior members of the United States Congress to the prime minister of Lithuania concerning Dr Margolis and the other Holocaust Survivors defamed by the far right’s ‘Double Genocide’ industry in the Baltics.]

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Leave a comment

Lithuania’s Main News Portal Calls Jewish Partisan Hero Fania Brantsovsky a Suspect in a Mass Murder after she is Honored by the President of Germany


Minutes after the German Embassy in Vilnius issued a press release announcing that it had awarded Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit to Holocaust survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (born 1922), Lithuania’s main news portal, Delfi.lt, published a bileful attack replete with libelous and ridiculous accusations about her ‘war crimes’ (in effect trying to blame the Holocaust’s victims, a frequent ploy of the Baltic region’s Double Genocide Industry that is pushing the Prague Declaration in the European Parliament). The campaign against Holocaust survivors was launched by the antisemitic press and picked up by state prosecutors, starting in 2006 (see Blaming the Victims and the 28 Oct 2009 entry on the home page). English translation. The Lithuanian original appeared with this caricature of anti-Nazi resistance veteran Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, whose entire family perished in the Holocaust. It is not known why the Yiddish institute’s website contains no mention of the award, or of the unseemly attack against its own beloved librarian, who has been with the VYI since its inception in 2001. Speculation has centered on pressure ‘from above’ and fear of falling into disfavor with powers that be. On a related note, there is growing international interest in preservation of the underground partisan fort where Fania lived from September 1943 until the region’s liberation in July 1944. Authorities in the country seem to wish the fort to disappear. Fania is the country’s last Holocaust survivor who actually lived there. She continues to accompany visitors and students there. The international effort to save this remarkable Holocaust site is spearheaded by Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments site.

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Human Rights, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute | Leave a comment

Erasmus Students invited to ‘Exchange Genocide Project’


European exchange students on the Erasmus program in Lithuania have received this email from the program’s local leadership inviting them to join for free an interactive ‘Exchange Genocide Project’ complete with Russian speaking actors and psychological and physical punishment. Participating Erasmus students are required to sign this confirmation form.

There is no mention of any ‘Exchange Genocide Project’ to commemorate the Holocaust or to visit peacefully any of the 202 mass murder sites in the country.

Erasmus is financed by the European Union.

Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Russian Speakers' Personal Status, Rūta Vanagaitė | Tagged | Comments Off on Erasmus Students invited to ‘Exchange Genocide Project’

Hostages to an Ill-Begotten Theory


by Leonidas Donskis

This essay first appeared in Transitions on Line on 10 October 2008, with the following editor’s note: “Lithuanian authorities in late September closed their two-year investigation into the wartime partisan activities of Yitzhak Arad, a Lithuanian-born Israeli historian and a former head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, reportedly on the urging of the European Union and the United States. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to link Arad to possible war crimes committed by Soviet partisans during a 1944 fight with German forces that left many Lithuanian civilians dead. The authorities are still considering whether to put two Lithuanian Jewish women, Fania Brantsovskaya (Brantsovsky) and Rachel Margolis, on the witness stand in connection with the killings.”

It is republished here with Professor Donskis’s permission. For a history of the issue, see our page on the subject of Holocaust survivors defamed by prosecutors.

See more of Professor Donskis’s work in Defending History.


A disturbing tendency has recently appeared in Lithuania. In the words of the eminent scholar of Yiddish Dovid Katz, this tendency may best be described as the “Holocaust Obfuscation movement.” Its essence lies in subversion of the logic and evidence of the Holocaust, whitewashing or at least selectively reading the history of the Second World War and drastically shifting the roles of victims and evil-doers.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hostages to an Ill-Begotten Theory

German Parliamentarian wins award in Jerusalem, blasts the ‘Prague Declaration’


German Social Democratic parliamentarian Gert Weisskirchen was awarded a certificate of honor at the Israeli Knesset on 16 December for a lifetime of fighting antisemitism, racism, and Holocaust distortion. The Knesset session was integrated into the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism.

During an informal celebration at Jerusalem’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, Mr Weisskirchen penned, in his famed telegraphic style, on Global Forum letterpaper, his opposition to the ‘Prague Declaration’ in the spirit of three new ‘DEs’: ‘De-valuation of the victims, De-stortion of history, De-legimitization of the Holocaust. These are the reasons why I oppose the Prague Declaration’ — Gert Weisskirchen

Images courtesy of Dr Clemens Heni of WPK.

Posted in EU, Germany, Gert Weisskirchen, Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on German Parliamentarian wins award in Jerusalem, blasts the ‘Prague Declaration’

U.S. Congress Protests Lithuanian Gov. Campaign against Rachel Margolis and other Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi Resistance


On the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Margolis family in the United States released to the media a 3 December 2009 letter from the United States Congress to the prime minister of Lithuania, protesting in no uncertain terms the campaign being waged against 88 year old historian, museum builder and biologist, Dr Rachel Margolis; 87 year old Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute; and 83 year old Holocaust scholar Dr Yitzhak Arad, who was founding director of Yad Vashem. All three have been the subject of ongoing ‘investigations into war crimes’ by Lithuanian prosecutors and of extensive defamation by the country’s mainstream media. Since the saga got underway in the spring of 2006, none has been charged, and not one has been cleared. Holocaust studies specialists increasingly suspect a ruse to create a bogus paper trail of ‘investigations’ of Holocaust survivors as a diversion to the documented history of massive Baltic participation in the Nazi-led genocide of the Jewish population, as well as to the region’s dismal record of not punishing a single Nazi war criminal since independence. See the media coverage; responses to the anti-survivor campaign; critiques of the underlying ‘red=brown’ movement and the state-funded apparatus that underpins it.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on U.S. Congress Protests Lithuanian Gov. Campaign against Rachel Margolis and other Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi Resistance

State Prosecutors ‘Visit’ Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day to ask Questions about ALJ chief Joseph Melamed


Officials from Lithuania’s state prosecution service came to the Jewish Community’s premises at Pylimo Street 4 in Vilnius today — during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event — to ask community officials for information about Joseph Melamed, 85, a Tel Aviv resident. The news spread rapidly and caused disquiet among the small remnant community.

Attorney Joseph Melamed, a Holocaust survivor, with his Hebrew book ‘Lita’ (Lithuania) in his office at the Association of Lithuanian Jews on King David Boulevard in Tel Aviv

Mr. Melamed, head of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, possibly the world’s last active Litvak survivor organization, is himself a Holocaust (Kovno Ghetto) survivor, a veteran of the anti-Nazi partisans, veteran of the Israeli war of independence in 1948, a retired Israeli diplomat and a prominent attorney. He is the author and editor of various works about the Lithuanian Holocaust.

Prosecutors told the Lithuanian Jewish Community that they are ‘investigating’ Mr. Melamed in relation to his organization’s publication of lists of alleged local war criminals who are alleged to have participated in the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. A few of the people on these lists are considered ‘national heroes’ by various nationalist elements, especially those who joined the anti-Soviet resistance in and after 1944.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Events, Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on State Prosecutors ‘Visit’ Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day to ask Questions about ALJ chief Joseph Melamed

Blaming the Victims? State Agencies & Other Elites Defame Holocaust Survivors



APOLOGIES

THIS PAGE HAS MOVED HERE

NEW URL: https://defendinghistory.com/blaming-the-victims-documents-and-sources/120225

 

 


Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Blaming the Victims? State Agencies & Other Elites Defame Holocaust Survivors

Vilnius Prosecutors ‘visit’ Lithuanian Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day, questioning ties to Survivor in Tel Aviv who is the latest to be ‘investigated’


Confirmation has been obtained that on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January (respected internationally as the day marking the liberation of Auschwitz), Lithuanian prosecutors visited the premises of the Jewish Community of Lithuania at Pylimo Street 4, Vilnius, to question community leaders about their ‘knowledge’ of Joseph Melamed, a Holocaust survivor resident in Tel Aviv.

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Posted in Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Vilnius Prosecutors ‘visit’ Lithuanian Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day, questioning ties to Survivor in Tel Aviv who is the latest to be ‘investigated’

Swastikas Flaunted on February 16th Independence Day


In 2010, Uzgavenes coincided with February 16th Independence Day celebrations. In some areas, Nazi symbols were touted. Occasionally the practice is nowadays packaged as the reclamation of the prewar swastika as a proposed symbol of the nation. In this image, residents of Klaipeda celebrate ‘classic swastika art’. Photo courtesy of  DMN. Report hereEnglish translation. [Note: The Klaipeda swastikas led to the court case which legalized the public display of swastikas; see now entry for 19 May 2010.]

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Human Rights, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania, Symbology, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE) | Comments Off on Swastikas Flaunted on February 16th Independence Day