OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY | GERMANY | THE STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | “GOOD WILL” FOUNDATION | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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by Arkady Kurliandchik
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I am well aware that for a very long time there has been a tradition of awarding long-time office-holders with assorted awards and medals on suitable occasions. There seems to be, moreover, a certain logic to it. If you are totally in charge of something for a long time, then, apparently — you must deserve an award. Nevertheless, there is much mystery and mystification around the recent award by the German Embassy in Vilnius of the prestigious Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany to the long-time ruler of the ersatz “Lithuanian Jewish Community.” The award cites, inter alia, her “long-term efforts to unite the Lithuanian Jewish Community, including strengthening the organization’s role on the national and international level.” This is so painfully ridiculous to virtually all of the surviving Jewish community of Lithuania precisely because it is the precise opposite of our experience over more than a decade. Except for a tiny handful receiving largesse for servitude, it is hard to find a single Jew in Vilnius who feels comfortable walking into what has become a kind of “Lithuanian agency for Jewish affairs” at the Pylimo 4 headquarters populated by the rich and powerful. Many see here the nepotistic benefits for a tiny number of elite families, without the elementary transparency of full and timely accounting online for all of the millions being spent from the state-funding, which is actually funding that derives, via restitution, from pilfered prewar Jewish community assets.
Why would the German Embassy not do its minimal due diligence? Enhancing it further by connecting it to D-Day adds injury to insult.
