Litvak Affairs

See the page
https://defendinghistory.com/litvak-studies
for an introductory reading list on
LITVAK STUDIES

A Great European City’s 700th Birthday: Will They Now Take Down Vilnius Public-Space Honors for Holocaust Collaborators?

Posted on 26 March 2023 by Defending History

[LATEST UPDATE. PAGE PUBLISHED ON 1 JAN. 2023]

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VILNIUS—The Defending History community celebrates the 700th birthday of Vílna (today’s beautiful Vilnius — capital of the democratic EU state Lithuania; in Yiddish — Vílne; Polish Wilno; Belarusian Vilna; German Wilna) in the spirit of love for a city whose hundreds of years of harmony brought such magnificent cultural achievements in an array of cultures and languages. One of them is its Jewish legacy. Briefest of examples: Thousands of books in Hebrew, Aramaic and Yiddish were published in the nineteenth century alone. The Gaon of Vilna and the founders of modern Yiddish scholarship walked these streets.

The universally revered founder of Vilnius, Grand Duke Gediminas (Gedymin) built his new capital in 1323 as a harmonious symphony of humanistic diversity, a legacy that pulsates even today on the city’s charming streets. He is surely looking down on his city aghast at these “monuments” (in effect) to Aryanist ethnic purity, via the glorification of “nationalist heroes” who joined the Holocaust to kill as many Jewish citizens as possible. The Gediminist spirit will emerge triumphant, wait and see…

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged 700th Birthday of Vilnius, Go Vilnius, Holocaust in Vilnius, Monument to Collaborators in Vilnius#, Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius, Vilnius + Jewish tourism, Vilnius 700 Years | Comments Off

Photographic Memories of Roza Bieliauskienė (on her Shlóyshim)

Posted on 1 March 2023 by Defending History

OBITUARIES | LITVAK NEWS | ROZA BIELIAUSKIENĖ

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We mark the traditional conclusion of the thirty-day mourning period (standard Yiddish: shlóyshim, Lithuanian Yiddish shléyshim, Hebrew sheloshim) for Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023), founding curator of Lithuania’s Jewish museum, beloved researcher, art historian, guide, teacher, and translator, who has helped thousands of people from near and far with their Jewish culture research over the last 35 years. See Defending History’s obituaries by Dalija Epšteinaitė (Dalia Epstein) and by Dovid Katz; and DH’s video interview with Roza about her life recorded less than a year ago; DH’s Roza Bieliauskienė section.

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I: from Roza’s son Julius Bieliauskas:

Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries, Roza Bieliauskienė | Tagged Emanuelis Zingeris, Rachel Kostanian, Roza Bieliauskiene, Samuel Bak | Comments Off

We Knew Roza

Posted on 26 February 2023 by Defending History

OBITUARIES | LITVAK NEWS | ROZA BIELIAUSKIENĖ

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by Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

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in memory of

Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023)

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She died faster than a match burns out. Dumbfounded, we are trying to understand her place in our lives, and in Jewish culture, to which she devoted so much energy. The Jewish Museum in Lithuania has a long-suffering history. It burned, and was plundered, and ceased to exist, opened and closed many times… There were always experienced workers, Torah connoisseurs who knew Hebrew and, of course, Yiddish.

And suddenly, after World War II, only a few of these specialists remained alive. And in 1949 the museum, where writers, journalists and other cultural figures had already settled, the Soviet authorities again closed the museum and dispersed its collections, all that had miraculously survived during the war years, distributing it to various museums in Lithuania. Jewish culture was rapidly destroyed. Yiddish writers either went to camps, like all “rootless cosmopolitans,” or mastered some applied professions, while others began to write in Lithuanian. In a rare Jewish family did they continue to speak máme-loshn (Yiddish). Parents among themselves — yes, but with children in Russian or in Lithuanian.

Posted in Arts, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Obituaries, Roza Bieliauskienė | Tagged Dalia Epstein, Dalija Epšteinaitė, Jews ih Lithuania, Roza Bieliauskiene, Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum in Vilnius | Comments Off

Review of Michael Kretzmer’s Documentary Film “J’Accuse”

Posted on 16 February 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | FILM | ARTS | MEDIA | COLLABORATOR GLORIFICATION | J. NOREIKA

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by Dovid Katz

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Genuine heroes of this saga—both written out of the film

At left: Evaldas Balčiūnas (who first called his nation’s attention (in Lithuanian) and the world’s (in English) to state-sponsored adulation of Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika. That was a year after his classic essay “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” appeared in Defending History in 2011. Here pictured at Vilnius County Court after one of the hearings in the litany of kangaroo cases against him (Defending History was there at each hearing to support him). He is DH’s 2023 Person of the Year.
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At right: Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas brought his self-crafted poster to a nationalist event on independence day in central Vilnius, with an image to show his people the kind of national hero Lithuania should be celebrating: the inspirational Holocaust-era rescuer Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė (DH’s person of the year in 2018). The gentle, teetotaling mathematician and philosopher took this sign right into the heart of an alcohol-fueled ultranationalist demonstration, leaving observers of every persuasion in awe of his courage. Dr. Kulikauskas boldly led the effort to expose Noreika in Lithuania and is the de facto author of the primary documents underpinning the legal petitions to the state’s Genocide Center and its courts. A Lithuanian American born and raised in California, he and his family migrated to newly free Lithuania decades ago.
See DH’s Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas sections. A future film maker might even find an enchanting angle in the stark differences between the two Lithuanian heroes of this story. One is a devout Catholic, the other an atheist. One is an anarchist, the other a nationalist. One an urban family guy, the other a lone thinker and dreamer in a faraway wooden hut in the depths of the Lithuanian countryside.

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VILNIUS—Michael Kretzmer’s new documentary J’Accuse! provides a terrific extended interview with legendary truth-teller Silvia Foti. The film’s narration provides effective statements on ongoing East European state adulation of Nazi collaborators though focused on just one, Jonas Noreika of Lithuanian Holocaust infamy (who was the Chicago-born Foti’s grandfather).

Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Michael Kretzmer's Documentary Film "J'Accuse!" on the Lithuanian Holocaust, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Baltic Truth (Dudu Fisher), BBC's How the Holocaust Began, Danny Ben-Moshe, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Film J'accuse on Lithuanian Holocaust, Grant Arthur Gochin, Grant Gochin, Holocaust collaborators Glorified, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė, Marc Radomsky, Michael Kretzmer, Michael Kretzmer's film J'Accuse, Review of film J'Accuse, Robyn Sassen, Roland Binet, Ruta Vanagaite, Silvia Foti, Simon Wiesenthal Center | Comments Off

Film, Video, Radio, Music

Posted on 8 February 2023 by Defending History

[LATEST UPDATE. PAGE PUBLISHED 18 DEC. 2013]

FREE ONLINE

DIRECTED BY MARC RADOMSKY. PRODUCED BY DANNY BEN-MOSHE

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Films and Videos on Defending History topics:

J’Accuse! produced by Michael Kretzmer featuring Silvia Foti and Grant Arthur Gochin. Defending History’s review by Dovid Katz.
Baltic Truth by Andrejs Hramcovs & Eugene J. Levin, narrated by Dudu Fisher. Jewish Journal’s review by Bette Keva.
How the Holocaust Began (BBC documentary with James Bulgin, featuring Ruta Vanagaite). Defending History’s review by Roland Binet.
Rewriting History directed by Marc Radomsky, produced by Danny Ben-Moshe (2012). Reviews; USA screening tour; Facebook page; SYD site. Background of Prague Declaration. Available free online.
Defending Holocaust History by Richard Bloom (2013, updated version 2018). Available free online.
When Double Genocide means Single Genocide by Gerit Ziegler, Frank Brendle, Arndt Beck (2012).

Continue reading

Posted in Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Michael Kretzmer's Documentary Film "J'Accuse!" on the Lithuanian Holocaust, Music, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Baltic Truth by A. Hramcovs & E.J. Levin, Dudu Fisher, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Film "J'Accuse", How the Holocaust Began, James Bulgin, Jonas Noreika, Lithuania film J'Accuse!, Michael Kretzmer J'Accuse!, Nazi monuments in Vilnius, Ruta Vanagaite, Silvia Foti, The Nazi's Granddaughter, Vilnius's 700th anniversary | Comments Off

Roza Bieliauskienė (1946 – 2023): Cofounder of Lithuania’s Jewish Museum, Longtime Chief Curator, Educator, Specialist on Litvak Artists

Posted on 29 January 2023 by Defending History

ROZA BIELIAUSKIENE | OBITUARIES | MUSEUMS

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The following is a revised text of Dovid Katz’s obituary that appeared on his Facebook page today.

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Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023)

The world of Jewish Vilna and Litvaks everywhere mourn in deep sorrow the untimely sudden death of our dear Roza (Róze, Reyzl) Bieliauskienė, beloved scholar of Lithuanian Jewish art, long time historian, museum curator, educator, guide and a loyal friend unafraid of untoward local politics and its boycotts. Whether for an old friend or a foreigner she’d never seen before, Roza would rush to help anyone research anything if it was in the field of Lithuanian Jewish culture, history. Here is our 2 hour+ interview with her (entirely in Yiddish) from less than a year ago (recorded and posted in the Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA) thanks to the generosity of Remembering Litvaks Inc).

Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Obituaries, Roza Bieliauskienė | Tagged Jews in Vilnius, Lithuania + Jews, Roza Bieliauskiene, Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania, Yiddish in Vilnius, ראָזאַ ביעליאַוסקיענע | Comments Off

Books in the Debate to 2023 — With Latest on Silvia Foti’s “Nazi’s Granddaughter”

Posted on 18 January 2023 by Defending History

[updated]

see also: BOOKS SECTION

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Evaldas Balčiūnas reviews Vilnius Genocide Center chief’s new book on the Lithuanian Holocaust; in German translation

Silvia Foti: The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal

UPDATE OF MAY 2022:

Sylvia Foti’s major new book is widely available in English and Lithuanian, among other languages. QUESTION: Why is the center of Vilnius still blighted by an upgraded plaque & bas-relief (right) and a central boulevard marble slab glorifying Hitler collaborator Jonas Noreika, who masterminded the death of thousands of Jews, and touted his unadulterated hate for Jewish fellow citizens in a prewar book? Why do Western diplomats, and most visiting American, British and Israeli Jewish dignitaries feel obliged to avoid even the most polite critique of these prominent carbuncles on the face of the European Union? Surely, a true friend of Lithuania would want the best for Lithuania and its international stature, even if a small far-right “history rewriting elite” might feel offended.

Kitos Knygos Books published Lithuanian edition of Silvia Foti’s book; she appeared in Vilnius to launch it at the Feb. 2022 Vilnius Book Fair

See the author’s major op-eds in the New York Times (27 Jan. 2021 [as PDF]), Wall Street Journal (26 Aug. 2021 [as PDF] & Lou Gerber’s 7 Sept.WSJ letter [as PDF]; EU Today (2 Sept. 2021 [as PDF]); author’s BBC Hard Talk interview with Stephen Sackur (15 April 2021); 17 Sept. 2021 report in Spiegel;

Events include: Seminar at Harvard University’s Davis Center; Jewish Federation of Greater Houston (23 Jan. 2022); Palos Heights (Ill.) Public Library (10 May 2022)

Related reports in Algemeiner.com; Andrew Higgins in The New York Times; Gil Skorwid and Patrick Smith on NBC News; Grant Arthur Gochin in Jewish Journal; Richard S. Hirschhaut at American Jewish Committee;

**Reviews of Foti’s The Nazi’s Granddaughter: Bettina Berch in Jewish Book Council; Liz Mineo in the Harvard Gazette; in the National Book Review.**

Background on author’s website. Spanish edition

When you visit Vilnius, Kaunas and other Lithuanian citizens, be sure to ask the powers that be to remove city-center shrines to brutal Holocaust collaborators that mar this beautiful European country.

Notes from my Life

Posted on 1 January 2023 by Defending History

MEMOIRS | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | HUMAN RIGHTS | PERSON OF THE YEAR | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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I was born in Šiauliai on May 27, 1962. My father worked in nearby Kuršėna. My first memories are mostly from there, especially the hamlet Daugėliai, established thanks to a brickyard, and surrounded by forests and the Venta river. My first ten years we children of the common yard rose up against the construction workers who were demolishing the football stadium that we had built with our own hands. For a six-year-old, I was quite adamant, standing up against a construction company truck. Alas, when my mom discovered my struggles, I was forced to rapidly move my resistance underground.

Evaldas Balčiūnas is Defending History’s Person of the Year 2023

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views | Comments Off

DH’s 2023 Person of the Year: Evaldas Balčiūnas

Posted on 1 January 2023 by Defending History

PERSON OF THE YEAR | LITHUANIA | EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS | HISTORY

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In the decade since Evaldas Balčiūnas began informing the English-speaking world, in a series of articles in Defending History, of the details, scope, and pain of his own country pursuing a state policy of glorifying Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators, the phenomenon has moved from local shadows to the bright lights of open and free debate across the democratic world. His 2012 exposé of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika ultimately led to the publication in America of a bold new book, The Nazi’s Granddaughter by Sylvia Foti. But back here in Lithuania, Evaldas was lugged into court for years and years on kangaroo charges and harassed extensively. The Defending History team was there at each hearing to provide moral support. The day will surely come when Evaldas Balčiūnas — journalist, educator, rebel, author, and historian — will be honored by Jewish and Holocaust history and remembrance groups internationally, by humanists everywhere, and last but not least, by his own country, as its fearless grand ethicist of the earlier twenty-first century.

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Editor’s memoir

Evaldas Balčiūnas

In 2011, when our small Defending History team headed out (as we did each year) to Kaunas to monitor and document the 2011 neo-nazi city center march, an event that glorified Holocaust collaborators, we went for a coffee after the event. There, our mentor who never missed a march before his final illness, Milan Chersonski (1937–2021), the longtime Vilnius Yiddish theatre director and editor for some dozen years of the Lithuanian Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania, told us (in Yiddish, of course): “Look, there is one young Lithuanian who has more courage than the rest of the country combined. He has been writing articles on the tragedy of his country’s government organs glorifying Holocaust collaborators in the public space. And unlike others, he’ll be happy for Defending History to publish them in English translation. Trust me, his articles are more important that all of ours that come from Jewish pens.”

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Defending History's Person of the Year, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged Defending History Person of the Year, Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuanian Holocaust | Comments Off

Jerusalem Post’s ‘Report’ on ‘Kaunas Capital of European Culture’ Fails to Even Mention Public Shrines Glorifying Local Holocaust Perpetrators

Posted on 17 December 2022 by Defending History

OPINION | MEDIA WATCH | KAUNAS | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS

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Not for the first time, the Jerusalem Post has sent a “correspondent” to Lithuania to do a write-up in the professional style of a journalist’s report, that serves in fact to facilitate the project of some branches of the Lithuanian government to falsify Holocaust history (2013 example). This falsification is not in the spirit of classical denial of the last century. It is rather primarily a case of dotting the country with shrines (street names, plaques, sculptures, school and university hall names), all in the public space, all financed by the state, that actually glorify local Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators, while simultaneously investing a fortune in “Jewish events” that will hypnotize naive foreign visitors who like royal treatment, photo-ops with officials, and delightful attention.

Posted in Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged Barbara Sofer, Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jerusalem Post, Kaunas Capital of European Culture | Comments Off

Wollongong, Australia is a Long Way from Kaunas, Lithuania: Discovering a Holocaust Collaborator Among Us

Posted on 15 November 2022 by Defending History

LITHUANIA | HISTORY | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS

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by Michael Samaras

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Michael Samaras at the Wollongong Art Gallery in Australia

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Wollongong, an Australian city located about 80 kilometres south of Sydney, is a long way from Lithuania’s Kaunas, which probably made it attractive to Bronius Sredersas. He arrived in 1950, having fled Lithuania ahead of the Red Army in 1944. For the next 25 years Sredersas, one of more than 100,000 displaced persons to settle in Australia, worked in Wollongong’s steelworks. He led an unobtrusive life and acquired an anglicised nickname, “Bob”. He never married and didn’t waste his money. Instead, he saved his pay, frequented auction houses and with a canny eye built a substantial art collection.

In 1976, Sredersas shocked the citizens of his adopted city by presenting his art collection to them. For an industrial city like Wollongong, which didn’t even have an art gallery, this gift was a sensation. It triggered the establishment of the Wollongong Art Gallery which has since grown into a major regional cultural institution.

Sredersas was widely celebrated in the media and an exhibition space within the new gallery was named in his honor. After his death in 1982, his memory was preserved with eminent persons giving lectures in his memory. The gallery erected a plaque and hosted the Sredersas Dinner as a fundraising social event.

In 2018, the gallery staged a major exhibition celebrating Sredersas. Titled “The Gift”, the exhibition included a recreation of his home, a display of the artworks, a video, and a symposium on his life and benefaction.

Publicity for the exhibition included mention that in Lithuania, Sredersas had been a policeman. While I was aware of Sredersas’ life as a steelworker in Australia, his prior career as a policeman was new to me. I knew though that the Nazis had relied on local collaborators, formed into police battalions, to carry out the Holocaust in Lithuania. I was appalled at the possibility that Wollongong, my home town, might be honoring a Holocaust perpetrator and decided to see if I could find out more.

Posted in Australia, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged Bronislaus Schroeders, Bronius Sredersas, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, International Refugee Organisation (IRA), Joe Melamed, Konrad Kwiet, Michael Samaras, Paul Daley (Guardian), SD (Sicherheitsdienst), Sydney Jewish Museum | Comments Off

Yet Again, Naive Foreigners in Awe of Annual PR Show by ‘Red-Brown Commission’ (and its Director who Supports ‘War Crime Investigations’ of Holocaust Survivors)

Posted on 3 October 2022 by Defending History

OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | MR. RAČINSKAS ON THE HOLOCAUST | LITHUANIA | DOUBLE GENOCIDE

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VILNIUS—With nearly all local Holocaust Survivors now gone, or effectively out of public circulation, Lithuania’s “Red-Brown Commission,” a major European engine for the downgrade of the Holocaust via far-right “Double Genocide” history revisionism is again in the forefront of PR efforts to bowl over naive foreign visitors and delegations to this city, particularly on September 23rd each year, with “moving Holocaust elegies.” For Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, the very choice of Sept. 23 (day of the 1943 liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto by the Germans, two years after the murder of the majority of Lithuanian Jews in hundreds of towns across the land) was seen as a decoy. The day each of them had etched in the heart in perpetuity was June 23rd, when in 1941, violence against Jews broke out in hundreds of locations, with murder documented in around forty — before the first German forces arrived or managed to set up their authority. It was the day when six hundred years of peaceful, harmonious coexistence turned overnight, under Hitlerist propaganda, to dehumanization, humiliation, plunder, rape, injury and murder. To this day, an industrial grade revisionist industry continues to obfuscate or outright deny the history of the First Week (i.e. the last week of June 1941). Indeed, June 23rd is celebrated by far-right government historians each year as the date of a supposed “uprising” against the Soviets by the white-armbanded Jew killers who did not “rebel” until the Soviets fled in disarray from Hitler’s invasion, when they began to murder Jewish neighbors across the land unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust, in which 96.4% of Lithuanian Jewry perished. In 2020, Dr. Arunas Bubnys, the chief historian of the second “Holocaust entity financed by the state,” the Genocide Center, celebrated the “holiday ” alongside banners of two major Holocaust collaborators. He was rewarded a year later with directorship of the Center.

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL) | Tagged International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Red-Brown Commission, Ronaldas Racinskas | Comments Off

Rachel Kostanian’s Inspiring Life Story (and Message) Now on German Wikipedia

Posted on 23 September 2022 by Defending History

RACHEL KOSTANIAN | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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Vilnius Cinderella Comes to the Ball (belatedly, and in Berlin)

German Wikipedia’s new entry tells the tale of Lituhania’s Rachel (Rokhl, Rochel) Kostanian, who for decades led a one-woman campaign in Vilnius for truth about the Holocaust, standing up to some very powerful forces. She was a co-founder and long time director of The Green House in Vilnius. Photo: Rachel in Berlin with Thomas Pfanne, former German cultural attaché in Lithuania, after she was honored by the president of Germany. See Defending History’s Rachel Kostanian section.

Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian | Comments Off

Russian Warship, Go F**k Yourself! (Tale of an Overdue Vilnius Cultural Version)

Posted on 19 September 2022 by Defending History

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | (AB)USE OF JEWISH STUDIES FOR HISTORICAL REVISIONISM | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | YIVO IN LITHUANIA | MEDIA WATCH | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND JUDAIC STUDIES | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | NOREIKA GLORIFIED

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by Julius Norwilla (Vilnius)

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Look what you can see standing right by Vilnius’s Cathedral Square: The Soviet “Sports Palace” ruin that symbolizes not only antisemitism but also: Soviet/Russian Empire spiritual and political domination of Lithuania’s free spirit. High time to be rid of this carbuncle on the beautiful face of modern Vilnius?

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The first phase of the eradication of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in Shnípishok — modern Šnipiškės — and of the people buried there, started back in 1830, contemporaneous with an uprising against the Russian Empire. The November Uprising, as it is now known, started with the will to resist the czarist government’s plans to send the army of Poland — at the time an autonomous kingdom within the Russian Empire — to Belgium and France, as well as with the dreams of restoring Polish independence. In 1831, seeing that the uprising for independence would soon take over Vilna, the Russian Imperial government expropriated a section of the Jewish cemetery by the bank of the Viliya (now Neris), and established an artillery citadel to keep the freedom-loving city at all times in the crosshairs of its cannon barrels. But even after the establishment of the citadel, more than three quarters of the actual graves (and their stoness or mini-mausoleums, oyhólim) remained untouched. This legendary cemetery is a Litvak pantheon, a monument to the civilization of Lithuanian Jewry. So it is meaningful that its first phase of destruction got underway just as the Russian imperial government’s project to enhance its military presence in Vilna, by making sure that the city’s inhabitants live in constant fear.

A small section of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt. The Soviet Sport Palace was built in its heart. All stones and inscriptions were trashed but thousands of graves survive on all four sides of the building, now an eyesore in the heart of modern Vilnius.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off

Updates on Kaunas’s ‘Capital of European Culture 2022’ Year Without (So Far) Removing a Single Shrine to Local Holocaust Collaborators

Posted on 6 September 2022 by Defending History

[latest update]

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | THE 2022 LEVINAS AFFAIR OF 2022

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Congratulations to the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, once known also as Kovno (in Yiddish forever: Kóvne) on its selection as Europe’s “Capital of European Culture” in 2022, sharing the title with Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg. But as the midpoint of the city’s co-reign rapidly approaches, it is necessary, albeit sad, to have to note that not a single public-space glorification of local Holocaust collaborators had been removed. Zero. No city on the planet has as many monuments to local partners in the genocide of that city’s Jews. The 30,000 Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) of Kaunas were brutally murdered, and the city played the primary role in the launch of the Lithuanian genocide on 23 June 1941, before the arrival of the first German forces. Thousands were murdered before the Germans arrived and/or set up their administration.

See Lev Golinkin’s updated 2022 catalogue in the Forward of public space shrines to Nazi collaborators worldwide

Lithuanian government authorities have reportedly invested large sums to lure “Useful Jewish Idiots” from the UK, US, Israel, and further afield to participate in “cultural events” intended to obfuscate and deflect from the primary issue: Why are the enablers of the slaughter of Kovno Jewry still honored by street names, plaques and university lecture halls and statues in the city? Local Jewish leaders who have dared to speak up have rapidly been smeared as “Putinists” for daring to criticize the far right’s hold over national history policy (and indeed, the need for such a policy to start with).

But in the waning days of 2021, a “waterfall of truth” began to cascade from an unanticipated quarter. Michael Levinas, son of the celebrated Lithuanian-Jewish born French philosopher Emanuel Levinas, forbade authorities to name a fancy new institute after his father. This was kept under wraps until his 21 Dec. Le Figaro opinion piece broke the story, and it was duly reported in Lithuania by LRT.lt. See Defending History’s media tracker page for background and updates.

Posted in 'Levinas Center' in Kaunas, Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas, Collaborators Glorified, Human Rights, Jonas Žemaitis, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Kaunas Capital of European Cultlure 2022, Kovno (Kaunas) | Comments Off

In Honor of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) on her 100th Birthday (2022)

Posted on 12 August 2022 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE]

by Dovid Katz

Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: from the saga of 2008…

See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section

Note: This page is a work in progress. A number of older documents, articles, photographs, and recordings remain to be digitized, catalogued, and posted.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged Ambassador Donal Denham, Ambassador John Cloud, Ambassador Simon Butt, Dovid Katz, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Shimon Alperovich (Alperavicius), US Embassy's Joseph Bosky | Comments Off

Are Leaders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania ‘Taking Advantage’ of Ukraine Tragedy? They Call on EU to Support Far-Right Holocaust-Obfuscating ‘Prague Platform’

Posted on 28 July 2022 by Defending History

Reports in Baltic Times and Delfi

For over a decade Defending History has exposed the far-right”Double Genocide” history-revisionist, Holocaust-obfuscating agenda of the “Prague Platform of European Memory and Conscience” which has repeatedly covered for East European efforts to glorify Nazi collaborators and perpetrators

“Putin’s criminal and barbaric invasion must be countered to the hilt and we must rally unfettered to the cause of Ukraine’s freedom. But for far-right double-genocider revisionists in the Eastern E.U. to take advantage of it for Holocaust obfuscation is just plain wrong.”

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff is first to respond (in Times of Israel blogs)

Will Western leaders — and institutions dedicated to the history of the Holocaust and leaders in Holocaust education and commemoration — speak out and subject the “Prague Platform” to some long overdue scrutiny, and warn the European Commission about this “new initiative”? European citizens’ hard-earned euros continue to flow to the revisionists whose “unholy bible” is still the Prague Declaration of 2008… Defending History is proud to have helped provide the European parliamentary response, the Seventy Years Declaration…

Defending History’s statement on the war in Ukraine

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When Ottawa Citizen and The New York Times broke taboo on wartime discussion of East European state-sponsored Holocaust obfuscation

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But what is the “Prague Platform”?

Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Double Genocide, Estonia, History, Latvia, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform" | Tagged Holocaust Revisionism, PRague Declaration (Holocaust revisionism), PRague Platform of European Memory and Conscience | Comments Off

The Nine Lives of Dónal Denham

Posted on 28 July 2022 by Defending History

BOOKS | IRELAND | NORWAY

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by Steinar Gil

My good friend and colleague for two and a half years in Vilnius, Dónal Denham, has written a book with the title Nine Lives: The Reflections of a Dedicated Diplomat. The book is an interesting, fascinating read about an eventful career in the service of Ireland at home and abroad, enriched by an excellent selection of photos that add life and substance to the text. The author also draws a vivid picture of his early formative years in Ireland and England and student years at Trinity College. He writes warmly about his family, not avoiding the pain of personal losses, exacerbated by separation and distance. Diplomats from all countries would subscribe to his tribute to his wife Siobhan (“without whom nothing worthwhile would have happened to me”) who “as an unpaid ‘trailing spouse’ was a treasure beyond measure, largely unrecognized by officialdom.”

So, which are Dónal Denham’s nine diplomatic lives?

Posted in Ambassador Dónal Denham, Ambassador Steinar Gil, Books, Ireland, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views, Norway | Comments Off

‘Morbid Memorandum’ (of AJC+LJC+GWF+Vilnius Mayor) Says Jews in Lithuania ‘Dying Out Altogether’ — While Allocating Millions for New ‘Community Center’ Building on Sacred ‘Great Synagogue Square’

Posted on 12 June 2022 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNA GREAT SYNAGOGUE | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE

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VILNIUS—In the days following publication by Defending History of a report reacting to press releases about a (secret?) “memorandum” signed by the heads of the official “Lithuanian Jewish community” (LJC), the head of international affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the “Good Will Foundation” (GWF) and the Mayor of Vilnius, a number of conscience-stricken employees at LJC have been sending around copies of various versions of the memorandum, signed on 25 May, during the recent “Fifth Litvak Congress” here in Vilnius.

Update of 13 June 2022: One day following publication of this report, the “Good Will Foundation” published the signed English memorandum, using the wording “is now dying out altogether” to refer to today’s Jewish community in Lithuania, its hopes, and its dreams.

Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Vilna's Great Synagogue & its Courtyard (Shúlheyf) | Tagged AJC in Lithuania, Andrew Baker (American Jewish Committee) AJC, Faina Kukliansky (LJC), Geros valios fondas (Vilnius), Good Will Foundation, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish issues, Remigijus Šimašius, Vilna Great Synagogue, Vilnius Great Synagogue, Vilnius Great Synagogue Square | Comments Off

Uh-Oh, Here We Go Again: Secret Memorandum on Future of Vilna Great Synagogue Courtyard

Posted on 29 May 2022 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNA GREAT SYNAGOGUE

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by Dovid Katz

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It has not been easy for our embattled team to keep Defending History going for over a dozen years now, based here in Vilnius. But as with other small but committed projects committed to speaking out for historic justice whomever it will please or displease, misconceptions can flourish. For example, this journal has indeed opposed the misuse of millions of Lithuanian citizens’ hard earned tax euros for campaigns to “equalize” for new generations (and today’s West) Nazi and Soviet crimes (the “Red-Brown” Commission); to target Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance by smearing them as “war criminals” (state prosecutors); to establish as European heroes brutal participants in the Holocaust (the Genocide Center and Museum); efforts by government bodies (foreign ministry under some governments) to insist on European Union cave-in to the revised Baltic far-right historiography (note the Prague Declaration and DH’s response: the Seventy Years Declaration received personally a decade ago by the president of the European Parliament).

UPDATE OF 7 JUNE 2022:

A senior employee of the official ‘Lithuanian Jewish Community’ has asserted to DH that the secret memorandum contains the line: ‘After World War II, the Jewish community in Vilnius and Lithuania declined significantly and is now dying out altogether’ (thereby sentencing, over the signature of the mayor, the official community head, and a major figure from the American Jewish Committee) our small but creative, dynamic, variegated and life-loving Vilna community to imminent and utter demise)…

Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilna's Great Synagogue & its Courtyard (Shúlheyf) | Tagged Andrew Baker, Faina Kukliansky, Vilna Great Synagogue Courtyard, Vilner shot-shul, Vilnius Great Synagogue, Vilnius Jewish Community life, Vilnius municipality | Comments Off

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

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Latest

Litvak Affairs

[LATEST UPDATE. PAGE PUBLISHED ON 1 JAN. 2023]

OBITUARIES | LITVAK NEWS | ROZA BIELIAUSKIENĖ

I: from Roza’s son Julius Bieliauskas:

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by Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

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in memory of

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OPINION | FILM | ARTS | MEDIA | COLLABORATOR GLORIFICATION | J. NOREIKA

by Dovid Katz

Genuine heroes of this saga—both written out of the film

[LATEST UPDATE. PAGE PUBLISHED 18 DEC. 2013]

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DIRECTED BY MARC RADOMSKY. PRODUCED BY DANNY BEN-MOSHE

See also DH sections on: ARTS, BOOKS, FILM, MUSIC

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Films and Videos on Defending History topics:

J’Accuse! produced by Michael Kretzmer featuring Silvia Foti and Grant Arthur Gochin. Defending History’s review by Dovid Katz.

Baltic Truth by Andrejs Hramcovs & Eugene J. Levin, narrated by Dudu Fisher. Jewish Journal’s review by Bette Keva.

How the Holocaust Began (BBC documentary with James Bulgin, featuring Ruta Vanagaite). Defending History’s review by Roland Binet.

Rewriting History directed by Marc Radomsky, produced by Danny Ben-Moshe (2012). Reviews; USA screening tour; Facebook page; SYD site. Background of Prague Declaration. Available free online.

Defending Holocaust History by Richard Bloom (2013, updated version 2018). Available free online.

When Double Genocide means Single Genocide by Gerit Ziegler, Frank Brendle, Arndt Beck (2012).

ROZA BIELIAUSKIENE | OBITUARIES | MUSEUMS

The following is a revised text of Dovid Katz’s obituary that appeared on his Facebook page today.

Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023)

[updated]

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Evaldas Balčiūnas reviews Vilnius Genocide Center chief’s new book on the Lithuanian Holocaust; in German translation

Silvia Foti: The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal

UPDATE OF MAY 2022:

Events include: Seminar at Harvard University’s Davis Center; Jewish Federation of Greater Houston (23 Jan. 2022); Palos Heights (Ill.) Public Library (10 May 2022)

Related reports in Algemeiner.com; Andrew Higgins in The New York Times; Gil Skorwid and Patrick Smith on NBC News; Grant Arthur Gochin in Jewish Journal; Richard S. Hirschhaut at American Jewish Committee;

Reviews of Foti’s The Nazi’s Granddaughter: Bettina Berch in Jewish Book Council; Liz Mineo in the Harvard Gazette; in the National Book Review.

When you visit Vilnius, Kaunas and other Lithuanian citizens, be sure to ask the powers that be to remove city-center shrines to brutal Holocaust collaborators that mar this beautiful European country.

See also a selection of street names and public-space shrines across Lithuania and DH’s Collaborators Glorified section. Also: Noreika section.

MEMOIRS | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | HUMAN RIGHTS | PERSON OF THE YEAR | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

PERSON OF THE YEAR | LITHUANIA | EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS | HISTORY

LITHUANIA | HISTORY | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS

by Michael Samaras

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RACHEL KOSTANIAN | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

Vilnius Cinderella Comes to the Ball (belatedly, and in Berlin)

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | (AB)USE OF JEWISH STUDIES FOR HISTORICAL REVISIONISM | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | YIVO IN LITHUANIA | MEDIA WATCH | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND JUDAIC STUDIES | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | NOREIKA GLORIFIED

by Julius Norwilla (Vilnius)

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[latest update]

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | THE 2022 LEVINAS AFFAIR OF 2022

[LAST UPDATE]

by Dovid Katz

Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: from the saga of 2008…

Note: This page is a work in progress. A number of older documents, articles, photographs, and recordings remain to be digitized, catalogued, and posted.

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Reports in Baltic Times and Delfi

“Putin’s criminal and barbaric invasion must be countered to the hilt and we must rally unfettered to the cause of Ukraine’s freedom. But for far-right double-genocider revisionists in the Eastern E.U. to take advantage of it for Holocaust obfuscation is just plain wrong.”

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BOOKS | IRELAND | NORWAY

by Steinar Gil

OPINION | VILNA GREAT SYNAGOGUE | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE

Update of 13 June 2022: One day following publication of this report, the “Good Will Foundation” published the signed English memorandum, using the wording “is now dying out altogether” to refer to today’s Jewish community in Lithuania, its hopes, and its dreams.

OPINION | VILNA GREAT SYNAGOGUE

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

**Reviews of Foti’s The Nazi’s Granddaughter: Bettina Berch in Jewish Book Council; Liz Mineo in the Harvard Gazette; in the National Book Review.**