Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Jewish Community Complains About Works at Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
Posted in CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Tagged Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage, CPJCE, Piramont, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, USCPAHA
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Lithuanian State Bank and Major UK Firm Seem Deeply Involved in Vilnius Jewish Cemetery Scandal
PAPER TRAIL | REGISTRY OF OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | DH SECTION
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VILNIUS—Turto Bankas, the state bank here whose main mission is to “organize and coordinate renewal of state-owned real estate,” has again revealed itself to be deeply involved in the international scandal of constructing a new National Congress Center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, whose graves date back to the fifteenth century and include some of the leading European Jewish scholars of the last millennium. The project continues to attract opposition from various parts of the world, including major Lithuania-descended rabbis internationally and some members of Lithuania’s small Jewish community. Moreover, Protestant and Catholic authors have pointed out that this would not likely be the fate of an analogous medieval vintage Christian cemetery.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Commission for Preservation of the Heritage, Eric J Rymer, Lesley Weiss, Piramont Snipiskes cemetery, The Right Solution (UK), Turto Bankas, US commission on heritage abroad, USCPAHA, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Defending History Responds to Vilnius Architects’ Three “Visualizations” for “Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery”
Architects Publish Three Visualizations for National Convention Center Planned for Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Where Thousands Still Lie Buried
But critics warn that property magnates, politicians, and their foreign Jewish shmendriks will be haunted for generations by a rather different visualization…
Vulovak / DefendingHistory.com
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, EU, Human Rights, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Christian-Jewish relations (Lithuania), Emanuelis Zingeris, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Litvak news, Piramont, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemeteries, Vytautas Landsbergis
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Now We [Who Lie Buried in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery], Know…
PAPER TRAIL | REGISTRY OF OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | DH SECTION
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VILNIUS—The following is a reprint of the article published on 2 July 2016 in Yated Ne’eman, authored by the eminent scholar, Professor Bernard Fryshman. The title refers to the accompanying illustration which considers the views of the many thousands of Jews buried at Piramónt, Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės (Shnípishok) district, in active use from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. See also background to the article, PDF of the original article, the catalogue of international opposition, the paper trail, the DH section, and our editor’s summary of the issue published in December 2015 in The Times of Israel.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Professor Bernard Fryshman, US State Dept Manipulated?, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged Benzion Shalom Eliezer Freshwater
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Asra Kadisha on Vilna Cemetery: From Proud Powerhouse of Historic Truth to Silent Mouse?
PAPER TRAIL | REGISTRY OF OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | DH SECTION
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O P I N I O N
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VILNIUS—Between October 2014 and October 2015, the international Jewish-cemetery group Asra Kadisha, coordinated by haredim largely affiliated with the “Zalmen” branch of the split Hasidic Satmar group (today the world’s largest Hasidic group) made a number of contributions that will remain permanent. Thanks in whole or in part to Asra Kadisha, eighteen important documents were published opposing the antisemitic decision of some Lithuanian government officials to allow a convention center to rise, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of skeletons on all four sides, skeletons of Jewish citizens of Vilnius buried there between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a Protestant minister and Catholic philosopher have pointed out, such would not have been the decision were it a Christian cemetery or one housing heroes of Lithuanian culture between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of course the millions in store for property developers and their many “beneficiaries” (for decades to come) play a prime role; antisemitism enters the picture when the state fails to put in play the same brakes which it applies for majority culture and majority religion sacred sites.
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, United States, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged Asra Kadisha, CPJCE
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Document Unearthed: 1935 Tel Aviv Protest Against Plans to Defile the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
DOCUMENTS | PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—Professor Sid (Shnayer) Leiman, widely considered to be the world’s leading scholar on the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (in the Šnipiškės district), today released a remarkable document: a spirited 1935 protest, in Hebrew, from the Vilna Gaon Synagogue in Tel Aviv, against the then Polish municipal authorities’ plans to construct a sports stadium in the heart of the old cemetery.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish cemetery at Snipiskes, Piramont, Vilnius Old Jewish Cemetery
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Ruta Bloshtein Discovers 1935 Vilna Rabbis’ Condemnation of Plans to Desecrate Old Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt
DOCUMENTS | PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—In a strictly private capacity, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein, a Vilnius born member of Lithuania’s small Jewish community, whose maternal ancestors hail from the shtetl Tríshik (Tryškiai), has released to the media a remarkable Yiddish public poster issued by the Vilna Board of Rabbis on 30 Nissan 5695 — the Jewish calendar date corresponding with 3 May 1935 — that she discovered in Lithuania’s central state archive. It is an impassioned plea by the Board of Rabbis asking the then Polish authorities in the city to abandon their plans for a sports stadium on the site of Piramónt (in the Šnipiškės district), the old Vilna Jewish cemetery that goes back to the late fifteenth century, and where thousands of luminous Litvak scholars lie buried.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein
Tagged CPJCE, Piramont, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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GioBaltic’s Report on Piramónt
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—Defending History today obtained from multiple sources here PDF copies (all with some faulty representation of Lithuanian language diacritics) of a new geophysical report by the company GeoBaltic, specialists in oil and gas exploration, on the territory of the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt in the Šnipiškės section of modern Vilnius. The entire document is now available online, and it is anticipated in some quarters that one or more of the funded bodies tasked with preserving Jewish heritage in Europe (e.g. the US taxpayer-funded Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in Washington DC and the CPJCE in London) will rapidly publish a full English translation along with their own reactions and responses.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
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First Test of Torah Integrity for New Vilnius Rabbi Samson Daniel Izakson?
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—When Lithuania’s official chief rabbi of eleven years’ standing, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein, was dismissed last summer after disagreeing with the government’s plan to erect a national convention center in the heart of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery, the event caught the attention of both local and international media. It was quietly hoped, both in Vilnius and abroad, that the eventual replacement would be loyal to sacred Jewish causes (see Rabbi Burshtein’s final statement of his tenure in Vilnius), someone who would not dare, for the considerations of a job, betray the letter and spirit of Jewish law, or the living and the deceased actual Jews of Vilna over the centuries. See Prof. Shnayer Leiman’s essay on the subject, our editor’s summary, a satiric Motke Chabad take, and Dr. Bernard Fryshman’s reminder that “Even now, the cemetery contains the bodies of the Chayey Odom and the Be’eyr ha-Goylo among many others.” A second essay by Professor Leiman paves the way for inspiring reconstruction of many of the major historic structures of Lithuania’s foremost Jewish cemetery.
by Vulovak (Vilnius) for DefendingHistory.com
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
Tagged CPJCE, Piramont (Snipiskes), Rabbi Samson Daniel Izakson, Rabbi Samson Izakson in Vilnius, Vilna Jewish cemetery
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Jews and Other Minorities in Eastern Europe Concerned by EU Chief’s Addition of a Single Word about Old Jewish Cemetery
CEMETERY PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION TO DATE | DH SECTION | BACKGROUND
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BRUSSELS—Back in October, 2015, high-level European Union spokesperson Chiara Adamo had replied to French human rights activist Didier Bertin on behalf of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, assuring the public that
“Contrary to reports in some Lithuanian newspapers and international media, the planned renovation project at the Vilnius Snipisek cemetery is not supported by European Union funds.”
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Appeals to the European Commission on Piramónt, Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, EU, Gareth Thomas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged EU and antisemitism, Jewish affairs in European Commission, Jewish cemeteries in Europe, Piramont (Snipiskes), US Commission for American Heritage, Vilniujs Jewish cemetery
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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
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Sid (Shnayer) Leiman, Yiddish Affairs
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Massive New Vilnius Construction Site: Within or Bordering City’s Old Jewish Cemetery?
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—A massive new construction site is being dug up next door to the Soviet-era Sports Palace building in the Šnipiškės section of Vilnius. The former Sports Palace, now the subject of intense international debate over plans for a 25 million dollar conversion into a national conference center, itself “indisputably rests in the middle of the former cemetery,” as confirmed by the United States government a decade ago. But what is unknown is where that may leave this bordering site, which may or may not lie outside various hypothesized boundaries of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, in use from the late fifteenth century to the 1830s. The last generations of pre-Holocaust Vilna Jewry called the cemetery Piramónt.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Tagged Lithuanian Jewish issues, Piramont, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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NY Satmar Affiliate of “London Grave Traders” Tweets Triumphant Photos with US Gov “Heritage Abroad Commission” Rep
DOCUMENTS| | US GOV’S “HERITAGE ABROAD” COMMISSION | OPPOSITION TO DATE | PAPER TRAIL | SECTION | EU ASPECTS
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KIRYAS JOEL, NY—The “Satmar Headquarters” of the movement’s “Aaronite” branch, partners of the London-based “CPJCE / Admas Kodesh” issued this tweet earlier today, which some observers take to convey the message that the politically connected Hasidic group continues to boast of preventing the “United States Commission for the Preservation [emphasis added] of America’s Heritage Abroad” from expressing even the mildest protest at plans to erect a twenty-five million dollar convention center in the heart of Vilnius’s oldest Jewish cemetery. With the exception of the CPJCE, exposed in Wikileaks as having demanded money for their “supervision” at the same cemetery in 2009 (see Jerusalem Post and JTA reports), major rabbis and rabbinic associations, alongside a variety of Jewish and non-Jewish figures, have expressed unanimous condemnation of the project.
The condemnations include the major groups of Lithuanian (Litvak) rabbis internationally, and also the rival branch of Satmar itself, the “Zalmanite” branch, whose own highest rabbinic court last summer added its voice to the Lithuanian rabbis worldwide. Vilnius has numerous venues appropriate for the new convention center. Some observers remain baffled at the insistence on the old cemetery site, where thousands of graves lie intact, and where revelers would clap, cheer, and use bars and toilets surrounded by a half millennium’s Jewish graves, including major Jewish scholars of the city, historically Vilna, once known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania.
Posted in "Admas Kodesh", Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged Admas Kodesh, Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, CPJCE, Herbert Block, Jewish cemeteries in Europe, Kiryas Joel, Piramont (Vilnius, Satmar, Satmar Aharonim, Satmar Zalmonim Zalis, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, USCPAHA, Vilnius Jewish cemeteries
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Let’s Dismantle the Sports Palace and Revoke the “Revocation of Hospitality”
OPINION | PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
by Andrius Kulikauskas
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I am inspired by the deep feelings which have been stirred amongst Litvaks regarding the fate of the Vilnius Sports Palace built on top of the Jewish cemetery. I wish for our state of Lithuania to do its utmost on behalf of Lithuanians to restore the Jewish cemetery in Vilnius as a symbol of our aspiration for the closest friendship between Lithuanians and Jews. I realized that it would be most helpful for me to present my thoughts in Lithuanian.
“From the top of Gediminas Castle, do we want to see and cherish, for hundreds of years to come, what the Communist Party Chief saw (the Sports Palace) or what the Grand Duke of Lithuania saw (the Jewish cemetery)?”
Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Antisemitism & Bias, Citizenship, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Birute Burauskaite, Christian-Jewish relations, Jews in Lithuania, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Litvak Affairs, Piramont (Snipiskes), Piramont Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Sporto rumai
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Is Lithuania’s President Distancing Herself from Prime Minister’s “Religious Zeal” for the “Convention Center in the Old Jewish Cemetery”?
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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NEW YORK—In response to his 20 Nov. 2015 letter that has been described by some who have seen it as “powerful,” New York businessman Berel Fried, an Orthodox Jewish scholar and descendant of many people buried at the old Piramónt Jewish cemetery in Vilnius received a reply this week from the office of Lithuania’s president, Dalia Grybauskaitė. Her reply, dated 18 Dec. 2015, was released today by Mr. Fried’s office in New York City. Mr. Fried has been a frequent visitor to Vilnius and Kaunas for many years and is a celebrated guest reader of the Torah when he visits the Choral Synagogue on Pylimo Street in Vilnius.
Posted in Berel Fried, Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
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Lithuania’s Liveliest Cemetery
OPINION | PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
by Dovid Katz
Editor’s note: Reprint from The Times of Israel, where this op-ed appeared on 13 December 2015.
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Back in 2009, a rancorous dispute over the old Vilna Jewish cemetery was ostensibly solved. Two new buildings, despite worldwide protests, would be allowed to remain, and in return, no more land would be pilfered from the cemetery at Piramónt, in the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The burial ground goes back to the late fifteenth century, at least. After the Holocaust, with virtually no descendants left to worry about, Soviet authorities helped themselves to the gravestones for use in building projects, but left many thousands of graves intact. A galaxy of eminent European rabbinic scholars and authors were buried there. But once the 2009 “Peace of Piramónt” was brokered (with help from Western embassies here), emotions cooled as all sides got on with their lives.
Future symbol for a capital city in the European Union? by VULOVAK / DefendingHistory.com
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Citizenship, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Double Games, Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged Beata Nemcova, Commission on Lithuanian-Jewish Heritage, CPJCE, Dovid Katz, Feinstein, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jews in Lithuania, Kotler, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Litvak Affairs, Piramont (Snipiskes), Snipiskes, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Soloveichik, Tomasz (Tomek) Wiśniewski, US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, Vilnius national convention center
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It’s Not Just About Old Jewish Cemeteries
O P I N I O N / P I R A M Ó N T / P A P E R T R A I L / O P P O S I T I O N / C E M E T E R I E S
by Milan Chersonski
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Translated from the Russian by Ludmila Makedonskaya (Grodno); English version approved by the author, Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij), longtime editor (1999-2011) of Jerusalem of Lithuania, quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. He was previously (1979-1999) director of the Yiddish Folk Theater of Lithuania. The views he expresses in Defending History are his own. See also Milan Chersonski section. Photo © Jurgita Kunigiškytė.
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There were many festive occasions celebrated once Lithuania declared its independence in 1990. So many hopes and expectations were inspired by the sweet word freedom. Free-ee-dom! Laisvė! Had it ever been possible to even imagine beforehand, taking one example, that Lithuania would hold a celebration to honor Israeli Independence Day, dear to Jews all over the world? The new state organized a large event at the Palace of Culture of the Trade Unions in Vilnius in honor of a faraway state, which in Soviet times was mentioned only as “the aggressive state of Israel.”
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish cemeteries Vilna, Milan Chersonski, Milan Chersonskij, Piramont Snipiskes cemetery, Snipiskes cemetery
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Did Prime Minister Netanyahu Really “Okay” the Vilnius “Conference Center in the Jewish Cemetery”?
[from the day’s front page]
AN ISRAELI-LITHUANIAN MYSTERY
In September, during his trip to Israel, the Lithuanian prime minister reported back home with triumph that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quite happy with plans for a $25,000,000 national conference center in the middle of the old (15th century origin) Piramónt (Šnipiškės) Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. But did the Israeli PM really reject out-of-hand the growing international Jewish (and non-Jewish) chorus of condemnation for a plan to have convention revelers clap, cheer, sing, drink in bars and use toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves including some of the foremost Jewish scholars of the last millennium? Where his own ancestors are buried? Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding. Background on the cemetery’s history and implications of the case for all Europe, and on the current project.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Israel, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Tagged Israeli-Lithuanian relations, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Joseph Melamed, Netanyahu + Lithuania, Piramont (Snipiskes), Rachel Margolis, Yitzhak Arad
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Question in the UK Parliament on the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius
UK / P I R A M Ó N T / O P P O S I T I O N / C E M E T E R I E S / D O C U M E N T S
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LONDON—At the initiative of Monica Lowenberg, Defending History’s London correspondent, UK member of parliament Gareth Thomas (Labour) tabled a question in the House of Commons (no. 14144) on 29 October 2015 on the planned desecration of the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (in the Šnipiškės district of Vilnius, Lithuania) by construction of a twenty-five million dollar national convention center. His question, and the reply by the current Minister for Europe, David Lidington, of 3 November 2015, are reproduced below (and available online).
Posted in Ambassador Simon Butt, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Gareth Thomas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), United Kingdom
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Vilnius Mayor Plays with Fire: Yiddish, Pilfered Jewish Gravestones, and an Olympics of “Barbarism”
O P I N I O N / C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T / P A P E R T R A I L
by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—This city’s dashing young new mayor, Remigijus Šimašius, elected last spring, has now added Yiddish to the previously bilingual (Lithuanian-English) signs, wrought of expensive metal in rounded-edged casement, in times of austerity for pensioners and others in town. These signs are being placed near Soviet-era edifices made of pilfered Jewish gravestones (matséyves) that are a blot on this charming East European capital. This is the latest model featured on the mayor’s office website:
Photo: Vilnius Municipality / Mayor’s Office.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius), Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, mayor of Vilnius, Piramont (Snipiskes), Remigius Simasius
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