Faina Kukliansky

Arkady Kurliandchik Critiques German Embassy’s Kukliansky Award

Posted on 12 July 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIA’S JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | GERMANY

◊

by Arkady Kurliandchik (Vilnius)

◊

I am aware that it has long been a practice to award assorted leaders with assorted honors on assorted occasions. Perhaps there is some logic behind it. If you are the leader of something, well, then surely you must deserve recognition!

However, the recent award which was bestowed on the D-Day anniversary upon the head of the “Lithuanian Jewish Community” by the German Embassy here in Vilnius seems rather misplaced. As stated on the LJC website, the award was presented to Ms. Faina Kukliansky “for her tireless work commemorating Lithuanian Holocaust victims and long-term efforts to unite the LJC including enhancing the organization’s role on the national and international level.”

Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Arkady Kurliandchik, Faina Kukliansky, Germany, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged American Jewish Committee (AJC), Andrew Baker (AJC), Arkady Kurliandchik, Faina Kukliansky, German Embassy in Vilnius, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Vilnius Jewish community | Comments Off

Summer Glut of Lithuanian Gov. Awards for (Alleged) “Useful Jewish Enablers” of Holocaust Revisionism

Posted on 11 July 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | AWARDS FOR WESTERN AND JEWISH ENABLERS | BACKGROUND TO EAST EUROPEAN HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | WHEN FOREIGN MINISTRIES PLAY WITH HOLOCAUST HISTORY FOR POLITICAL GAIN | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | (AB)USE OF JEWISH, JUDAIC, HEBRAIC & YIDDISH STUDIES | UPS AND DOWNS OF ISRAELI POLICY | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY SAGA | YIVO MANIPULATED

◊

More Lithuanian Government Glories & Medals for Alleged “Useful Jewish Enablers” of Baltic Holocaust Revisionism

♦ To the outgoing Israeli ambassador, HE Amir Maimon, after he posed with a portrait of an alleged Nazi collaborator Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas) in support of the collaborator’s glorification. Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas has reported for years on the collaborator, who is also featured on the front banner of neo-Nazi torchlit parades. The Wiesenthal Center had spoken out in good time.

♦ To the “fudged election” government-backed head of the state-supported Jewish community, eminent attorney Faina Kukliansky, after she granted “legitimacy” to the erection of a statue in Chicago to the same alleged Nazi collaborator, the first on American soil. The same monument was soundly rejected a year earlier by the democratically elected town council of New Britain, Connecticut. Head of the Jewish Agency now calling for monument’s urgent removal.

♦ To the current head of New York’s Yivo, Dr. Jonathan Brent, after a decade of intimate collusion in Holocaust obfuscation, glib betrayal of Holocaust victims and survivors and defamation of Yiddish scholars who disagree with far-right instrumentalization of this fragile language and literature and are loyal to the survivors and their families. See the plea by Vilnius’s last Vilna-born survivor, Prof. Pinchos Fridberg.

Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Faina Kukliansky, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, ministries, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated? | Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo), HE Ambassador Amir Maimon, Ms. Faina Kukliansky (Vilnius) | Comments Off

Lithuanian Jewish Community Shocked by Cave-In of Titular Head to Genocide Center’s Holocaust Obfuscation

Posted on 7 February 2016 by Defending History

POLITICS OF MEMORY | GENOCIDE CENTER | LITHUANIA | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

The following 5 February 2016 Jewish Telegraphic Agency news item has appeared widely in international Jewish media, including the Forward, Haaretz, Jewish Journal, and the Ottowa Jewish Bulletin.

◊

JTA—The leader of Lithuania’s Jewish community supported a proposal to delay publishing the names of suspected Holocaust perpetrators out of concern for their families’ reputation and privacy. Faina Kukliansky, a former prosecutor and president of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, made this assertion following discussions in Lithuania on publishing a list of 1,000 names that historians from the state-owned Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania have spent years compiling. The center’s director, Terese Birute Burauskaite, said on Tuesday that her institution would publish the list this year in a book, but later said it would transfer the list to state prosecutors instead. “I have it complete,” she said of the list, “but how will the families [of those named] react if this violates their rights, if their guilt is not proven? I will convey it to the prosecutors.” Burauskaite said she transferred a list with 2,055 names to the government in 2012, but it was neither published nor used in criminal investigations. The center then eliminated more than 1,000 names from that list.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Obfuscation in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Ruta Vanagaite | Comments Off

Faina Kukliansky, Chair of Lithuanian Jewish Community, Issues Sharp Response to Latest Genocide Center Whitewash of a Local Holocaust Perpetrator

Posted on 7 November 2015 by Defending History

VILNIUS—The website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania today posted a powerful response by chairperson Faina Kukliansky to the statement released earlier in the week by the national state-funded “Genocide Center.” That statement attempted to whitewash the infamous Holocaust perpetrator and Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika, and itself came as a response to a petition and series of articles last summer calling for removal of one of the public shrines to Noreika in the center of this city, the nation’s capital.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Faina Kukliansky, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Comments Off

Chairperson of Official Lithuanian Jewish Community Issues Statement After Sacking Chief Rabbi

Posted on 15 August 2015 by Defending History

D O C U M E N T S / C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T

◊

VILNIUS—Several hours after the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s website announced the effective dismissal of Chief Rabbi Chaim Burshtein (rapidly reported by JTA and in DH), the community chairperson issued the following statement, also on its website, focusing on the debate over the planned $25,000,000 convention center in Vilnius’s oldest Jewish cemetery, a project that has attracted considerable international opposition and press coverage, and has involved both political and financial intrigue. The text follows:

Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, CPJCE (London), Faina Kukliansky, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Comments Off

Jewish Community Website Posts Response to Jerusalem Post Article on Piramónt

Posted on 13 August 2015 by Defending History

VILNIUS—The website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania today posted an English version of its chairperson’s reply to a Jerusalem Post article of 11 August 2015 by Sam Sokol. The following is the text of the reply reposted in full with no textual changes. For more background from the Defending History perspective, please see the list of publications on the topic to date, DH’s summary of the high political and finance-sector intrigue, a registry of public opposition to the convention center project, and our editor’s open letter to the group of London rabbis invoked in recent debates.

Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, CPJCE (London), Faina Kukliansky, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged Vilnius Jewish cemetery | Comments Off

Chairperson of Lithuanian Jewish Community: Statement on Chief Rabbi and Old Cemetery

Posted on 8 August 2015 by Defending History

VILNIUS—The chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Faina Kukliansky, today released the following statement on the community’s website. It is reposted here in full in virtue of its references to the debate over plans for a $25,000,000 convention center project in the heart of the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės) in Vilnius.

Head of LJC Faina Kukliansky on Articles in Foreign Press about Chaim Burshtein

◊

Recently there has appeared in the world press an article and information that a rabbi has been deported from Lithuania and that this event is connected with plans by the Government to construct new buildings in the old Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok (Piramont) in Vilnius. The Lithuania Jewish Community denies these rumors. According to LJC chair Faina Kukliansky, no one has deported Rabbi Chaim Burshtein from Lithuania.

Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Faina Kukliansky, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Tagged Faina Kukliansky, Jewish cemetery in Spiniskes (Piramont), Vilnius Jewish cemetery | Comments Off

On Eve of Planned Neo-Nazi March, Statements by Head of Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Posted on 10 March 2015 by Defending History

VILNIUS—On the eve of the planned neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius, slated for 3 PM on March 11th, Lithuania’s independence day, the chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Faina Kukliansky, issued a statement on the community’s website, which was followed within minutes by a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Director of East European Affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff. The full text of both statements follows:

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Faina Kukliansky, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius | Comments Off

Chairperson of the Jewish Community on the Commemoration Event at Auschwitz

Posted on 22 February 2015 by Defending History

The following statrement appeared today on the website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania:

◊

Commentary by Faina Kukliansky, chair of the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Auschwitz in the winter, during International Holocaust Day, was as moving as the Holocaust survivors who met here. My thoughts swirled around the people who are still alive. In Lithuania the only still living survivor is Meyshe Preis, who through some sort of miracle survived the Auschwitz, Stutthoff and Dachau concentration camps. His poor health didn’t allow him to attend the commemoration of Auschwitz victims on January 27. Kings, queens and heads of state did attend. I want the people of Lithuania, her politicians and high-ranking civil servants, and especially her decision makers, to understood that a trip to Auschwitz is not the same thing as travelling to Brussels for the usual meeting.

Posted in Faina Kukliansky, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off

Lithuanian Jewish Community Issues Statement on Feb 16th 2015 March in Kaunas

Posted on 20 February 2015 by Defending History

The following statement appeared today on the website of the Jewish Commnity of Lithuania:

◊

The Position of the Lithuanian Jewish Community on the Slogan Chanted by the Lithuanian Union of Nationalist Youth, “Lithuania for Lithuanians”

The Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community, deeply upset and concerned by recent anti-Semitic attacks in the Kingdom of Denmark and France and by the rise in neo-Nazi tendencies all over Europe, calls upon the government institutions of the Lithuanian state to take stock of the situation in Lithuania at the current time. By identifying the problem of ethnic hate early, we can prevent possible tragedy in the future.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Faina Kukliansky, Human Rights, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off

Jewish Community’s Formal Reply to Dr. Efraim Zuroff

Posted on 31 January 2015 by Defending History

The following statement appeared today on the website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania:

STATEMENT BY THE JEWISH (LITVAK) COMMUNITY

It is not surprising that experienced journalists and politicians as well as leaders of well-known Jewish institutions, who are following Ms. Kukliansky’s activities devoted to expose Nazi criminals as well as to fight Neo-Nazism, were left in a complete state of confusion after reading Mr. Zuroff’s so called protest.

Posted in Events, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Efraim Zuroff, Faina Kukliansky | Comments Off

Wiesenthal Center Blasts Vilnius Genocide Center’s Involvement in Jewish Community’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Event

Posted on 28 January 2015 by Defending History

The Simon Wiesenthal Center today issued a statement expressing dismay that Vilnius’s state-sponsored Genocide Center (full name: Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania) was included in the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s annual program marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. The third of three events was dedicated entirely to a book produced by the Center. The only announced speaker for the event, the book’s author, is known for rejecting known elements of the historic narrative of the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry, for his support for monuments for pro-Hitler forces, and for participation in far-right pro-fascist journals.

Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Efraim Zuroff, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Efraim Zuroff, Faina Kukliansky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Lithuania, Shimon Alperovich, Simon Wiesenthal Center + Lithuania | Comments Off

Faina Kukliansky’s Speech at Ponár (Paneriai) on 23 September 2011

Posted on 3 October 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Faina Kukliansky

The following is the approved text of the speech by Faina Kukliansky at the September 23rd commemoration ceremony at Ponár (Paneriai), the mass murder site near Vilnius where some 70,000 Jews from the city and its surrounding areas, and around 30,000 non-Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their local partners. A prominent attorney and constitutional specialist, Kukliansky is chairperson of the Vilnius Jewish Community and deputy chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. The text was translated from the Lithuanian by Geoff Vasil and approved by the author.

In 1994 September 23rd was declared the day of commemoration for Lithuanian Jewish genocide victims, dedicated to honoring the victims. The Vilna Ghetto was liquidated on 23 September 1943 when the last surviving Jewish residents of the Lithuanian capital were murdered or sent to concentration camps abroad.

Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Faina Kukliansky, Opinion, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), September 23rd Commemorations | Comments Off

❊

Scholars & journalists: When you use DH, please cite DH.

❊

Litvak Heritage

• Towns and cities

• Kaddish

◊

Yiddish

◊

Latest