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LITVAK STUDIES

Jonas Paulavičius (1898–1952) is Defending History’s 2019 Person of the Year

Posted on 1 January 2019 by Defending History

OPINION

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VILNIUS—Even as various government bodies in Eastern Europe name years (and for that matter streets and lecture halls and squares) for Holocaust collaborators or, on occasion, “just” leaders of fascist militias during the Holocaust (sometimes also for export to America), Defending History continues, in the spirit of our 2018 decision, to continue to honor East European patriots who fought for their country’s independence and then went on, over two decades later, during the Holocaust, to just do the right thing and save Jewish neighbors threatened with certain murder by reason of their birth, and with the support of the then “nationalist forces” in partnership with the Nazis. For all of 2018, Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė (1898-1981) was our Person of the Year.

Read Danutė Selčinskaja’s article on the life and works of Jonas Paulavičius

Posted in Defending History's Person of the Year, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Comments Off

Jonas Paulavičius: Volunteered a Century Ago for Lithuania’s War of Independence, Went on to Save 16 People During the Holocaust

Posted on 1 January 2019 by Defending History

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by Danutė Selčinskaja

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Jonas Paulavičius (1898-1952)

During the Nazi occupation years, when humanity was being trampled, and marauding and murder were rampant, when all effort was put toward turning the inhabitants of occupied lands into obedient and unfeeling creatures, meeting a dedicated person who dared to resist the spreading hatred seemed like a miracle to the unjustly persecuted. Jonas Paulavičius, indomitable enemy of the Nazi regime and veteran volunteer of the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, went on to become such a miracle to twelve Kaunas Jews, two Russian POWs, and two persecuted Lithuanians. Jonas made a decision: the only way to resist the terror of the Nazis and their helpers was to save at least several Jews who were suffering at the hands of the Nazis and whose lives were at risk.

Jonas Paulavičius was born in 1898 to a family of poor peasants. He learned the trade of the carpenter in his teenage years and could earn a living by himself, thus becoming self-sufficient and independent at a young age. After Lithuania declared independence in 1918, it soon became clear that, without a military of its own, Lithuanian statehood was doomed. During the period of its initial formation and the first stage of battles against the Bolsheviks, the Lithuanian military was comprised of 3,000 volunteers who responded to the December 27, 1918, call issued by the Government: Lithuania is in Danger. Jonas Paulavičius was among the brave men who volunteered immediately to fight for the freedom of Lithuania.

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Danutė Selčinskaja, Defending History's Person of the Year, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged Danute Selčinskaja, DefendingHistory.com Person of the Year, Holocaust Rescuers in Lithuania, Jonas Paulavicius, Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania | Comments Off

Israel’s Interior Minister Protests Desecration of Old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 30 December 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | ISRAEL CHRONICLE | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION

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JERUSALEM—In a letter dated today, and released to the media, Israel’s Minister of the Interior Rabbi Aryeh Machluf Deri appealed to the director of the Foreign Ministry to take serious action concerning the threat of desecration to the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in today’s Šnipiškės section of modern Vilnius).

The letter calls for the Foreign Ministry’s “immediate intervention” and cites the pain that would be caused to world Jewry by pursuit of the current project planned for the site.

Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Comments Off

New York Daily News Covers Struggle to Preserve the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 30 December 2018 by Defending History

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION

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NEW YORK CITY—The Sunday edition of New York’s Daily News today published a report by its crime reporter Reuven Blau on efforts to save the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery by persuading authorities to move their planned new national convention center to another venue so that the cemetery, dating to the 15th century and containing the remains of thousands of Vilna Jews over the centuries, might be lovingly restored. The article appears on the newspaper’s website, but is not accessible in various European and other countries. For readers’ convenience, a PDF follows (and can be accessed here). The focus of the article is Mr. Dov (Berel) Fried of New York, a Talmudic scholar in the grand Litvak tradition who is one of the central figures in the international coalition that has emerged to save the cemetery.

Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, 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) | Comments Off

Vulovak’s Latest Caricature in His Series on ‘The Convention Center in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery’

Posted on 23 December 2018 by Defending History

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | HUMAN RIGHTS | ARTS | HUMOR (OF SORTS)

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אויך מיר אַ קאָנווענשאָן צענטער!

Oykh mir a konvenshon tsenter!

Don’t Lithuania’s citizens deserve a sparkling new convention center where they will be welcomed by leaders of the arts, entertainment, industry and statecraft, not by the ghosts of the thousands of Vilna Jewish citizens who lie buried on all four sides, in the city’s Old Jewish Cemetery, where their families purchased their burial plots in perpetuity?

by VULOVAK for Defending History

Posted in Arts, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory | Tagged Vilnius Jewish cemetery Snipiskes (Piramont) | Comments Off

Dr. Kulikauskas Issues Call to Lithuanian Society to Join Together in Dealing with Legacy of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika

Posted on 18 December 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas today released an appeal, in the Lithuanian language, that calls on fellow Lithuanian citizens to come together in opposing the ongoing national glorification of Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika in a spirit of historic integrity that would also lead to the inevitable conclusion that the controversial historical personage was in effect a Holocaust criminal. For some background on recent developments in the Noreika saga, set to culminate in a historic trial here in the Lithuanian capital on 15 January, see recent articles in DH’s Collaborators Glorified section.

The trial scheduled for 15 Jan. 2019. Sample Noreika document.

The Noreika case was first brought to the attention of the English speaking world by DH’s correspondent Evaldas Balčiūnas in 2012, as part of his series on “national heroes” who were Holocaust collaborators. As a result of those articles, Mr. Balčiūnas was subjected to years of prosecutorial harassment (scroll down to 2014 in his DH section). More recently, the 2018 bold article by Noreika’s granddaughter, American author and educator Silvia Foti in Salon resulted in New York Times coverage last September, that itself followed up on the paper’s March 2018 article on Holocaust related issues in Lithuania.

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika | Comments Off

Another One-Sided Yivo Program on the Lithuanian Holocaust — in New York City?

Posted on 16 December 2018 by Defending History

[Last updated 21 Dec. 2018]

OPINION | YIVO MANIPULATED? | WHAT IS THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION? | A VILNIUS HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S PLEA TO YIVO | FROM THE EDITOR OF LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY’S NEWSPAPER

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NEW YORK—Yet again, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, once the international bastion of living Yiddish high culture and genuine loyalty to East European Jewry, is putting on, in New York City, an event about the Holocaust in Lithuania that reflects only the Lithuanian government’s views on the subject. More precisely, a small number of well-funded government agencies in the business of “fixing the history of the Holocaust”: a “red-brown commission,” a Genocide Center, and Genocide Museum. The first of these, in a macabre tribute to George Orwell, is actually called “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”. And indeed, it is one of its veteran members that is the instructor of the New York seminar, “The Shoah in Lithuania” to be held in five sessions from 3 to 17 January 2019. The fee is $350, reduced to $275 for Yivo members. For background see Dr. Yitzhak Arad’s paper on the red-brown commission’s actual purposes, DH’s page and section, a recent historic overview by DH’s editor in a Holocaust studies journal, and the resignation letters of Prof. Konrad Kwiet and the late Sir Martin Gilbert.

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, United States | Tagged Christoph Dieckmann, Dieckmann + Holocaust in Lithuania, Dieckmann + YIVO, Dov Levin, Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Lithuanian Historical Commission, Red-Brown Commission, Ruta Vanagaite, The Shoah in Lithuania, Yiv-Bard Winter Program, Yivo and Lithuania, Yivo and the Holocaust, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Yivo-Bard program, ייוואָ | Comments Off

Regional Lithuanian Monthly Publishes Noreika Query at Heart of Upcoming 15 Jan. Vilnius Holocaust Trial

Posted on 12 December 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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Žemaičių Saulutė (“Samogitians’ Sun”) is an esteemed regional cultural monthly newspaper based in Plungė, Lithuania. It is shattering the silence about Lithuania’s state-sanctioned hero Jonas Noreika’s leadership in the Holocaust in Samogitia. It will print, in eight installments, Grant Gochin’s query to the Genocide Center, which asks, how can the Republic of Lithuania honor Jonas Noreika as an anti-Soviet hero when it acknowledges him as a Holocaust perpetrator?

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Evaldas Balciunas, Genocide Center Vilnius, Grant Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Silvia Foti | Comments Off

Richard Bloom’s Documentary, ‘Defending Holocaust History’, Now Online

Posted on 8 December 2018 by Defending History

FILMS AND VIDEO | ARTS | HISTORY | DOUBLE GENOCIDE

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA—Richard Bloom, director of Richard Bloom Productions, has just announced the release of the updated version of Defending Holocaust History, a documentary film originally released in 2013. The film focuses in on the campaign by elements of the Lithuanian government and the country’s nationalist elite to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, by attempting to delegitimize the Holocaust as a unique historical event through various actions designed to diminish the Holocaust and “upgrade local Soviet crimes” to the status of genocide, along the way harassing Holocaust survivors who joined the resistance while glorifying local Holocaust perpetrators who were also “anti-Soviet” (the entire complex has become known as “Double Genocide”). As readers of DH will know, these continue to be burning and current issues, every bit as timely as in the year of the original film’s production.

Posted in Arts, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off

Is Yiddish ‘Lingua non grata’ at National Library’s Exhibition on Prewar Lithuanian Jewish Life?

Posted on 5 December 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | MUSEUMS & EXHIBITIONS | THE ARTS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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by Dovid Katz

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Lead banner for National Library’s exhibition on prewar Lithuanian Jewish culture

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For many centuries, the Jews of Vilna (Yiddish Vílne, formal Ashkenazic Hebrew Vílno, modern Hebrew Vílna), and indeed, those from a huge radius of towns and villages in all four directions that looked to the then “Jerusalem of Lithuania” as their spiritual capital, the streets of the oldest Jewish settlement in the town were lovingly known as Di yidishe gas. The narrow dictionary definition is indeed “the Jewish street” but in the Yiddish of Vilna, as in other cities with highly developed Yiddish culture, the phrase came to signify the entire neighborhood in the sense that could perhaps best be captured by something like “our Jewish part of town.” When in 1920, the then Polish authorities offered the Jewish community the opportunity to name a few streets in town, Yídishe gas (Polish Żydowska) became one of them, for the neighborhood’s primary street. When the democratic Lithuanian independence movement of the late 1980s reached the stage of ridding the city of hated Soviet-imposed names, the old name was rapidly and boldly, restored, in its translative Lithuanian form, Žydų gatvė.

Posted in Arts, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Dovid Katz, Events, Leyzer Ran Section, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off

US Taxpayer-Funded Commission Taken to Court in DC for Helping Vilnius Builders Desecrate City’s Old Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 21 November 2018 by Defending History

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE

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NEW YORK CITY—A New York Institute of Technology professor of physics, Prof. Bernard Fryshman, who is also one of the world’s major advocates for the preservation of endangered minority cemeteries (he helped the US Congress draft its 2014 resolution on the subject) has teamed up with Boruch Pines, a New York based descendant of many persons buried in the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt in the Šnipiškės (Yiddish: Shnípeshok) district of modern Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Together, they filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on 8 November 2018. Defending History has obtained a copy of the summons and complaint, available as PDF, and below immediately following this report.

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, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad) | Tagged Admas Kodesh, Bernard Fryshman, Boruch Pines, Chaim Burshtein, Chelsea Clinton, Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, Committee for Presevation of Jewish Cemeteries (London), CPJCE, Marjorie Margolies, Paul Packer, Piramont cemetery Vilnius, S.J. Feffer, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, USCPAHA | Comments Off

Three Issues for Yad Vashem Conference that Legitimizes “Genocide Center”

Posted on 19 November 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

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by Gershon Taitz (Vilnius)

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I would like to invite the participants of today’s Yad Vashem Conference in Jerusalem, “Jewish Leadership in Lithuanian Ghettos” to consider a number of issues concerning this conference. First, please be aware that Dr. A. Bubnys is the chief historian at the “Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania.” His center of activity promotes inaccurate and hostile memory of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

We all recall the controversies ignited by A. Bubnys in his book on the Šiauliai Ghetto (Shávler géto). The book was written in such a way as to give the impression that Jews perished principally because of the Jewish leadership in the ghetto, and not because of the German and Lithuanian forces who were the voluntary and enthusiastic perpetrators (a classic case of trying to blame the victims). This makes the Genocide Center’s participation in a Yad Vashem conference on the topic of forced Jewish “leadership” of the ghettos problematic, not least because of the conference’s topic being precisely that nominal Jewish leadership. Indeed, it happens here that blame for the Holocaust is deflected as far as possible on the forced Jewish “leadership” of the ghettos and the “Jewish police” in the ghettos.

Posted in Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Gerhson Taitz, Gersonas Taicas, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Siauliai ghetto, Yad Vashem, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Comments Off

Is Yad Vashem Legitimizing Vilnius “Genocide Center”?

Posted on 19 November 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

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Under Pressure of Israeli Foreign Ministry?

Vilnius Genocide Center: “Legitimized” by 19 Nov. Yad Vashem Conference in Jerusalem?

Its chief historian Dr. A. Bubnys is a major speaker; See DH review of his book on the Vilna Ghetto and report on Jewish community’s response to his publication on the Shavl (Šiauliai) Ghetto. Are pliant “Jewish academics” being flown in and wheeled out to provide cover for the newest chapters in Holocaust revisionism? These include East European state glorification of collaborators and denial of the outbreak of mass violence by the LAF and other “nationalist heroes” against Jewish neighbors before the onset of German administration in the last week of June 1941.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Arunas Bubnys, Christoph Dieckmann, Evaldas Balciunas, Grant Gochin, Israel and Eastern Europe, Israel and Lithuania, Israeli policy on Holocaust, Jonas Noreika, Yad Vashem + Lithuania | Comments Off

Vilnius “Genocide Center” Defends Legacy of Holocaust Collaborator

Posted on 5 November 2018 by Defending History

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“BELIEVE IT OR NOT”

Lithuania’s State Sponsored “Genocide Center” Goes to Court to Defend Legacy of Notorious Holocaust Collaborator

The Question: Does a vibrant and successful EU/NATO democracy really need expensive far-right history “fixing” units that adore Nazi collaborators, stifle free debate of history and ethics, promote ultranationalism, and do untold damage to the country?

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Genocide Center Vilnius, Grant Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika (Vetra) | Comments Off

Dieckmann & Vanagaite Launch Crowdfunding Campaign for New Book

Posted on 1 November 2018 by Defending History

Member of Lithuanian Gov’s “Red-Brown Commission” Teams Up with Ruta Vanagaite, Best-Selling Author, in Crowdfunding Campaign for a New Book

Prof. Christoph Dieckmann, longtime member of the commission and author of a major scholarly work (in German) on the Lithuanian Holocaust, is seen by some, however, to “tow the government line” on the painful issue of widespread outbreak of violence and murder by the LAF and other “nationalists” against their defenseless Jewish neighbors before arrival (or setting up of authority) by the invading German forces in the last week of June 1941. For years now, commission-related “Holocaust spokespeople” have trivialized the numerous testimonies of survivors (sample), and the work of the late eminent historian Prof. Dov Levin, and others, in documenting the massive violence that broke out on 23 June 1941, before German forces arrived, and went on for varying periods of time. Does the new crowdfunding effort signal a shift in the commission’s position?

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Comments Off

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Ends Up with DH Editor in Hit Job by Neo-Nazi Blogger

Posted on 21 October 2018 by Defending History

How did Lithuania’s Foreign Minister End Up Together with Defending History’s Editor in Hit Job by Nation’s Top Neo-Nazi Blogger?

“By doing the right thing, and calling for the removal of a central Vilnius plaque that honors a brutal Nazi collaborator”

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LATEST ADDITION TO THE SERIES “OUR EDITOR IN THE NEO-NAZI IMAGINATION”

Is Lithuania’s Department of Cultural Heritage Really Permitting a Farm, Garden & Drinking Well Inside Old Jewish Cemetery of Radvíleshik (Radviliškis)?

Posted on 17 October 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | CEMETERIES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH AFFAIRS | LITHUANIA

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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I was taken aback by the news being informally reported. “They came and they fenced off a part of the Radviliškis (Radvíleshik, Radvílishok) Jewish cemetery for themselves,” people told me. This was a well-known Jewish shtetl before the Holocaust. Without further ado I went to check it. A house and big chunk of property with it, were fenced off and for sale, clearly within the cemetery perimeter (of course with gravestones long pilfered from that section, and buried people underneath undisturbed). My photos of all parts of the cemetery are here.

FARM FOR SALE

Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish heritage in Lithuania, Lithuanian Dept of Cultural Heritage, Radvileshik, Radvilishok, Radviliškis | Comments Off

Vilnius Jewish Community Calls for New Democratic Elections

Posted on 15 October 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | DEMOCRACY | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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VILNIUS—The elected leadership of the Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) today published on its website, and on its Facebook page, an English version of the Lithuanian original that appeared on 10 October on the website as well as, on the same date, in the form of a Baltic News Service (BNS) press release, providing the contact name of Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius), chair of the community and one of its twenty-one member elected council. The VJC, representing the more than 2,000 Jews of Vilnius in affiliation with groups in Šiauliai, Klaipeda and others, represents the vast majority of today’s living Jewish citizens in Lithuania. In fact, its electoral conference of May 2017 was the largest electoral conference of Jewish citizens in Lithuania this century.

“And most importantly […], to provide new elections for the chairpersonship of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in accordance with the honest rules that have been in place for many years, taking into account the votes of all the Jews of Lithuania, and not the ‘associations’ of ‘close friends’ who are themselves dependent for funding on the grace of the chairperson.”

Posted in A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius) | Tagged Faina Kukliansky, Jews in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC), Simon Gurevich, Simonas Gurevicius, Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) | Comments Off

Jacob Piliansky, 72, Soft-Spoken Spokesperson for Historic Truth and a Late-in-Life Artist, Dies in Vilnius

Posted on 10 October 2018 by Defending History

OBITUARIES | JACOB PILIANSKY | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE

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by Dovid Katz

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Jacob Piliansky (1946-2018)

Several dozen Vilnius Jews turned up today for the funeral of Jacob Piliansky at the city’s current Jewish cemetery at Sudervės 28. Decades ago, Piliansky, an engineer by trade, relocated to Washington DC (and for a time to the Netherlands) where he built a new life and career. But when his mother back in Vilnius, the legendary Dobke Jonis, turned ninety, he decided to return to his native Lithuania and live with her for the remainder of their years. Dobke (Dora Piliansky, 1912–2014), who passed away at age 102, was a cultural icon of her shtetl Zézmer (today’s Žiežmariai), whose prolific writings and drawings remain a testament, as does her testimony on the bestial brutality of the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) fascists in June 1941 who turned back Jewish escapees on the roads to ensure they would be trapped in the Nazi choke-hold. She brought up her children — Jacob (Yasha, Yankl) and his older sister Fréydke (Frida Piliansky Zavalkovsky, 1942–2016) — to stand proudly for historic truth and to fear nothing and nobody when it comes to telling the story of Lithuanian Jewry in its homeland. Or plain and simple, to stand up for what is right. Such folks do not often enjoy lifetimes of unbroken popularity or the easiest of times.

Posted in Jacob Piliansky, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius) | Tagged Defending Holocaust History, Dobke Jonis, Jacob Piliansky, Jews in Vilnius, Simon Gurevich, Simonas Gurevicius, Vilnius Jewish community | Comments Off

Museum of The Lost Truth: A Lithuanian Drama

Posted on 5 October 2018 by Defending History

OPINION | MUSEUMS | SHEDUVA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | SHTETL COMMEMORATIONS | HUMOR (OF SORTS)

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

Evaldas Balčiūnas informed the English speaking world of a series of state honors for alleged Holocaust collaborators, starting with Jonas Noreika back in 2012. He paid a hefty personal price for it (scroll down his DH section to 2014).

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PREAMBLE

The Lost Shtetl is a massive, holistic project to reclaim the Lithuanian Jewish heritage of Šeduva (Shádeve, older Shádev). Plans include a multimillion euro state-of-the-art museum complex scheduled to open in 2020 that is slated to become an international tourist attraction. Now is an excellent time for public comment and observers’ contemplation.

“The Lost Shtetl” will not be a generic community of faceless Litvaks. It will make tangible the lives of real individuals. But will we learn about the real individuals from the town and its region who destroyed them? Their names and faces? Or will we simply tuck them away into the phrase: “The Nazis and their local collaborators murdered 664 Šeduva Jews in Liaudiškiai forest”?

Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl", South Africa | Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lost Shtetl Museum, Museum of Jewish Sheduva, Seduva (Lithunia), Šeduva Museum of Jewish History, Sergejus Kanovicius | Comments Off

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Litvak Affairs

by Danutė Selčinskaja

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OPINION | ISRAEL CHRONICLE | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | HUMAN RIGHTS | ARTS | HUMOR (OF SORTS)

אויך מיר אַ קאָנווענשאָן צענטער!

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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The trial scheduled for 15 Jan. 2019. Sample Noreika document.

[Last updated 21 Dec. 2018]

OPINION | YIVO MANIPULATED? | WHAT IS THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION? | A VILNIUS HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S PLEA TO YIVO | FROM THE EDITOR OF LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY’S NEWSPAPER

OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

FILMS AND VIDEO | ARTS | HISTORY | DOUBLE GENOCIDE

OPINION | MUSEUMS & EXHIBITIONS | THE ARTS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

by Dovid Katz

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OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

by Gershon Taitz (Vilnius)

OPINION | YAD VASHEM MANIPULATED | GENOCIDE CENTER

Vilnius Genocide Center: “Legitimized” by 19 Nov. Yad Vashem Conference in Jerusalem?

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“BELIEVE IT OR NOT”

Lithuania’s State Sponsored “Genocide Center” Goes to Court to Defend Legacy of Notorious Holocaust Collaborator

The Question: Does a vibrant and successful EU/NATO democracy really need expensive far-right history “fixing” units that adore Nazi collaborators, stifle free debate of history and ethics, promote ultranationalism, and do untold damage to the country?

Member of Lithuanian Gov’s “Red-Brown Commission” Teams Up with Ruta Vanagaite, Best-Selling Author, in Crowdfunding Campaign for a New Book

How did Lithuania’s Foreign Minister End Up Together with Defending History’s Editor in Hit Job by Nation’s Top Neo-Nazi Blogger?

“By doing the right thing, and calling for the removal of a central Vilnius plaque that honors a brutal Nazi collaborator”

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OPINION | CEMETERIES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH AFFAIRS | LITHUANIA

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | DEMOCRACY | LITVAK AFFAIRS

OBITUARIES | JACOB PILIANSKY | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE

by Dovid Katz

OPINION | MUSEUMS | SHEDUVA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | SHTETL COMMEMORATIONS | HUMOR (OF SORTS)

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

Evaldas Balčiūnas informed the English speaking world of a series of state honors for alleged Holocaust collaborators, starting with Jonas Noreika back in 2012. He paid a hefty personal price for it (scroll down his DH section to 2014).

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