Litvak Affairs
The Seventy Years Declaration (Yiddish Text)
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Litvak Affairs, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Seventy Years Declaration in Yiddish, די זיבעציק יאָריקע דעקלאַראַציע, צום יאָרטאָג פון דער „ענדלייזונג“ קאָנפערענץ אין וואַנזע
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The Seventy Years Declaration
O P I N I O N
by Danny Ben-Moshe
This comment appeared today in the Jerusalem Post and is republished here with the author’s permission.
On January 20, 1942, the Nazi leadership gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin and adopted the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The Wannsee Conference, as this became known, from the suburb where the meeting was held, formalized the process that exterminated so much of European Jewry.
As we mark the seventieth anniversary of that 90-minute meeting in which fifteen people condemned millions to death, there are many crucial lessons to learn from the Holocaust. I wish to highlight two.
Firstly, the killing of a people begins not with violence, but through race-based hatred, progressing to institutionalized discrimination and only then culminating in murder. This is why antisemitism, racism and institutionalized discrimination must be addressed, for if left to fester the consequences can be tragic, severe and widespread.
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Danny Ben-Moshe, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience, Danny Ben-Moshe, Double Genocide, Seventy Years Declaration, Wannsee Confererence
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Joseph Melamed Replies to Article in VilNews.com
The following letter to the editor from attorney Joseph Melamed, chairman of the Assoiation of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, appeared today in VilNews.com.
Dear Editor,
The recent article by Dr. Irena Veisaite agreeing with the antisemitic establishment’s evaluation of the life’s work of Dr. Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office and a leading historian of the Lithuanian Holocaust, has been a cause of great dismay to us, the world’s last active organization of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
Posted in Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Dr. Irena Veisaite, Holocaust in Lithuania, Joseph Melamed
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Wyman Brent’s Speech at the Opening of the Vilnius Jewish Public Library
O P I N I O N
by Wyman Brent
Hello Everyone. Thank you for being here today.
No nation has ever become great by embracing racism, prejudice, discrimination, intolerance, and xenophobia. Such a country can only shrink within itself. Its people become small and bitter. No flower ever bloomed brighter nor smelled sweeter after having been dusted with hatred. Such a flower and such a people can only fade away.
Posted in Events, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Wyman Brent
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Why I am Translating Rozka Korczak’s Vilna Ghetto Memoir
O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
The Vilna Ghetto memoir of Rozka Korczak-Marlé (1921–1988) is unfortunately completely unknown to Lithuanians today. I have therefore decided to translate the book into Lithuanian (from the Russian edition that Korczak herself edited), and have published two samples, here and here, on Anarchija.lt.
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Books, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania
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Old Stones Speak to Young Pupils: Jewish Gravestones in the Walls of a Vilnius School Yard
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Photos by Richard Schofield (© R. Schofield)
The Lazdynai Middle School in Vilnius, built in the early 1970s, has an admirable reputation, inter alia for an excellent trilingual policy enabling Polish and Russian to flourish alongside the national language, Lithuanian, in a spirit of multicultural respect and harmony so fitting for the city’s history.
Updates to May 2013:
Return visit to the Stones of Lazdynai
♦
Updates to 15 December 2011
Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art and Monuments
Facebook discussion thread
Work in Progress: A Cultural Dictionary of Lithuanian Jewish Gravestones
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology
Tagged cohen hands, fate of Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe, Jewish gravestones, Jewish sites in Vilnius, Lazdynai, Lazdynai Middle School, Olandu Jewish cemetery, use of gravestones in walls with letters showing, Uzupis Jewish cemetery, Zaretshe Jewish cemetery
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Dovid Katz’s Review of Timothy Snyder’s ‘Bloodlands’ & Alexander Prusin’s ‘Lands Between’
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by Dovid Katz (Vilnius)
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NOTE: This review appeared today in East European Jewish Affairs under the title “Detonation of the Holocaust in 1941: A Tale of Two Books” (proof as PDF).
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Not for the first time, two fine historians have published in the same year their very different syntheses for the wider public, on the same topic, and based largely o known published sources, both having long proven their mettle as master researchers in previous publications rooted in archives and primary documents. On this occasion the resulting contrast is unusually startling. One of these books, Alexander Prusin’s The Lands Between, is a meticulously balanced and historically authoritative, but conventional and somewhat lackluster history that will appeal to lecturers looking for a solid textbook on twentieth-century East European history and, of course, history buffs ever fascinated by the Second World War.
Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, by contrast, is the work of a literary master who has what it takes to write a thriller. Deservedly, his book has captured the imagination of vast numbers of readers and pundits alike. It is also the work of a humanistic thinker who does not beat around the bush and has – very justifiably – made willful state mass murder his topic, leading him to grapple with murder en masse, a forever captivating topic, all the more so within the Hitler–Stalin complex of issues that continue to fascinate, daunt and rebound potently in today’s geopolitics.
Yet Snyder’s Bloodlands suffers from some cardinal biases that are all the more regrettable in such a masterly and popular work. First, though, it is prudent to briefly cover the book’s scope and at least a few of its highly consequential virtues.
READ MORE
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Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Alexander Purssin, Dovid Katz reviews Timothy Snyder, Timothy Snyder Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder on Holocaust
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Open Debate, Open Society, and Secret Societies
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Last Thursday, 3 November, an article I’d submitted to the Jerusalem Post for consideration appeared on the op-ed page (PDF of the print edition here). In democratic societies, sending an opinion piece to a respectable publication, signing it with one’s real name, and opening it (and oneself) to further open debate and discussion are rather standard. As usual, I linked to the article on my Facebook page, expecting some to agree and some to disagree, moving debate forward.
But a number of Facebook Friends who did not react on my page, or any other open forum, did for some reason find it appropriate to join a kind of witch hunt against the article and its author on a page of a “Secret Group” called Lietuva be neonacizmo (Lithuania Without Neo-Nazism), located at: www.facebook.com/groups/135816956486382.
The original discussion of 3 and 4 November 2011 is available here. A full English translation is appended below and is also available as PDF.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Games, Dovid Katz, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Russian Speakers' Personal Status, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Justinas Žilinskas, Lara Lempert (Larisa Lempertiene), Lietuva be neonacizmo, Lithuania Without Fascism, Rachel Margolis, Toleikis + Holocaust, Vytautas Toleikis
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Lithuania Assaults Holocaust Memory
O P I N I O N
by Danny Ben-Moshe
NOTE: This op-ed appeared in today’s Jerusalem Post (and in the Jerusalem Report).
Recent developments suggest Holocaust remembrance has fallen by the wayside as a key element of Jewish Foreign Policy, at least as far as Lithuania is concerned.
Holocaust remembrance is a central plank of Jewish Foreign Policy (JFP), a term that encompasses how Israel and Diaspora organizations act on issues of common Jewish concern. The establishment of Yad Vashem in 1953 and the Eichmann trial in 1961 showed how central the memory of the Holocaust was to Israeli public and foreign policy.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Danny Ben-Moshe, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Israel, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Red Equals Brown Iconography
The governing establishments in Eastern European states sometimes produce red-brown symbols as part of the wider campaign to give the notion of red-brown equality an aura of official sanctioned status. The effects are obvious: People are being desensitized to the swastika, Soviet symbols are ‘artistically’ (i.e. via political kitsch) recombinated into the new Dual Equal Evil symbols making the revisionist history ‘true’. Severe pain is caused to families of Holocaust Survivors and anti-Nazi Soviet war veterans alike. The continued silence of the European Union, the OSCE and NATO encourages the drift toward the far right, which includes clean-up of the image of Nazi collaborators in elite circles, and glorification of Nazi symbols in more uncouth environments.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, Litvak Affairs, Politics of Memory, Symbology
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Lithuania Cannot Appease Both World Jewry and Far-Right Extremists
O P I N I O N
by Olga Zabludoff
I commend Didier Bertin’s knowledgeable and sensitive observations in his article “Lithuania and the Memory of the Holocaust.” My comments here are more in the form of a PS to Mr. Bertin’s words. My take-off point is his reference to the term “Double Genocide,” a government-endorsed concept that has been bandied about in Lithuanian political circles in recent times. But more about this later. Mr. Bertin borrows the term for application in a different dual context: the original genocide of the Jewish people and the current movement on the part of the Lithuanian government to neutralize if not to obliterate the remembrance of the Holocaust.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Olga Zabludoff, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Didier Bertin, Double Genocide, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Olga Zabludoff
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Believe It or Not
Vilnius Prosecutors Launch Campaign against Another Holocaust Survivor, 86, this time via — Interpol!
Joe Melamed in his Tel Aviv office
At Lithuanian prosecutors’ demand, Israeli Interpol liaison officers speak with Mr. Melamed about the ‘accusations’
Report in Haaretz by Yossi Melman;
DefendingHistory.com reports here and here;
Geoff Vasil in the Jewish Chronicle
Yad Vashem withdraws invitations to visiting minster and resident ambassador for Vilna Ghetto commemoration; Coverage in Haaretz by Yossi Melman; Associated Press (→ CBS News, Fox,MSNBC, Washington Post, YahooNews etc); JTA (→WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc); Mishpacha
Three British MPs file Early Day Motion 2161 to protest the Lithuanian government’s action
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Holocaust Survivor Community in Shock as Yet Another Survivor Pursued by Lithuanian Prosecutors (and Interpol!), This Time for “Libel”
Vilnius Prosecutors Launch Campaign against Another Holocaust Survivor, 86, this time via — Interpol!
At Lithuanian prosecutors’ demand, Israeli Interpol liaison officers speak with Mr. Melamed about the ‘accusations’
Report in Haaretz by Yossi Melman;
DefendingHistory.com reports here and here;
Geoff Vasil in the Jewish Chronicle
Yad Vashem withdraws invitations to visiting minster and resident ambassador for Vilna Ghetto commemoration; Coverage inHaaretz by Yossi Melman; Associated Press (→ CBS News, Fox,MSNBC,Washington Post, YahooNews etc);JTA (→WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc);Mishpacha
Three British MPs file Early Day Motion 2161 to protest the Lithuanian government’s action
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ISRAEL’S GOVERNMENT MAINTAINS PUBLIC SILENCE
Posted in Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
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Yad Vashem Withdraws Invitation to Lithuanian Minister over Campaign against Joe Melamed; British Parliamentarians Move an ‘Early Day Motion’; Melamed Speaks Eloquently at Yad Vashem, Blasts Efforts to Glorify Holocaust Perpetrators as ‘Heroes’
Yad Vashem rescinded the invitations to the Lithuanian culture minister and ambassador to the 19 September event held in memory of the victims of the Lithuanian Holocaust. The cancelation of invitations came in response to the new investigation launched by Vilnius prosecutors (via Interpol) against a Holocaust survivor. The 30 August visit to Mr. Melamed by Interpol liaison officers in Tel Aviv was reported in DefendingHistory.com and by Yossi Melman in Haaretz.
Joe Melamed in his Tel Aviv office
The report on the disinvitation, also by Yossi Melman in Haaretz was rapidly picked up by the Associated Press and carried widely (e.g. CBS News, Fox, MSNBC, Washington Post, YahooNews). Further reports have appeared in the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Chronicle (London), Mishpacha, and JTA (WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc).
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
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Full Statement of the Leyzer Ran Family on Yivo’s Positions on the Lithuanian Holocaust and Current Machinations
NEW YORK—The Leyzer Ran family released this statement, dated 16 September 2011, which appears here in the original PDF format received. To turn pages please use the arrows in the upper left hand corner. Alternatively, the document may be accessed as PDF.
Posted in In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Leyzer Ran Section, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Leyzer Ran, Yivo, Yivo and Lithuania
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Lithuanian Gov’s ‘Crack Jewish-Issue Team’ in Washington for New PR Drive
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s Jewish PR campaign on Litvak culture and the Holocaust moves to Washington, DC this week, even as the government continues to invest in events glorifying the 1941 local Holocaust murderers, and to allow local antisemitism and neo-fascism to run rampant, often with the support of the state, or, one some occasions, open participation of officials of state-sponsored institutions.
What defies credulity this time around is that the series of events comes just as state prosecutors have used Interpol to harass yet another Holocaust survivor who joined the anti-Nazi resistance. This time the object of Lithuanian prosecutors’ interest is 86 year old Joe Melamed of Tel Aviv, elected chairman of one of the world’s last associations of Holocaust survivors from Lithuania (details in Haaretz and DefendingHistory.com; covered also in French, German and other Israeli publications).
One of the targeted Holocaust survivors is Dr. Rachel Margolis, an eminent Holocaust historian, resident in Rechovot, who feels unable to return to Vilnius for fear of prosecutors’ harassment. She is just over a month away from her 90th birthday.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, United States
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Et tu, Yivo? Holocaust Survivors Jolted by Plan for Lithuanian Foreign Minister to be ‘Guest of Honor’ at Vilna Ghetto Commemoration
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
When you have loved an institution all your life — and written over decades about its impact on the history of ideas — it becomes a responsibility, even when painful, to try to dissuade it from making a serious error that would put in jeopardy its integrity.
The Lithuanian foreign minister, who has to date not apologized publicly for his widely reported antisemitic outburst in October 2010, has been named by the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research as its ‘guest of honor’ at a concert on 22 September 2011. The remnant Jewish community of Lithuania is small and fragile. Nevertheless it responded robustly, less than a year ago, to the foreign minister’s comments and proceeded to publish its response in English, Lithuanian, Russian and Yiddish.
Yivo’s website enumerates the joint sponsorship for the 22 September 2011 event by ‘the Embassy Series in cooperation with the Lithuanian Consulate and the Lithuanian Delegation to the United Nations’. The event is being held to commemorate the anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto on 23 September 1943.
Perpetrators glorified
In 2011 — to mark the 70th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion, and to the chagrin of Holocaust survivors internationally — the Lithuanian government has invested in a series of events honoring the local perpetrators who began to kill Jewish neighbors in dozens of towns before the Germans even arrived (a reading list on the history is available here). The ‘logic’ has been that they were actually rebelling against Soviet rule, though it is not disputed by historians that the Soviets were obviously fleeing the Nazi invasion.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, September 23rd Commemorations, United Nations, United States, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Dr. Rachel Margolis, Foreign Minister of Lithuania, Yivo, Yivo and the Holocaust, Yivo and Vilna, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
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Wyman Brent Voices Fear his Vilnius Library Could Become Vehicle to “Whitewash and Obfuscate History and Cover for Rampant Antisemitism”
O P I N I O N
by Wyman Brent
I have a concern which I am sure that the readers of DefendingHistory.com share. I am talking about the possibility of the Vilnius Jewish Library becoming a vehicle for certain elements of the Lithuanian government to continue to whitewash and obfuscate history and to cover up for the antisemitism currently rampant here.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Books, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Wyman Brent
Tagged Jewish library in Vilnius, Vilnius Jewish Library, Wyman Brent
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A Speech Never Spoken at Plungyán (Plungė)
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
An imaginary speech, not delivered by any of the high government officials who addressed the commemoration at the mass murder site of the Jews of Plungyán (Plungė) on 17 July 2011.
My dear friends, it is precisely because I am a proud official of the government of independent, democratic, Lithuania, and I love my country, that I am able to speak here today openly, on the seventieth anniversary of the murder of the Jews of Plungė — Plungyán, as they proudly called it in the Yiddish that rang through its streets for so many centuries.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Plungyán (Plungė), Politics of Memory
Tagged Antisemitism Lithuania, Asta Skaisgirytė Liaukšienė, Desecration of monuments Lithuania, Emanuelis Zingeris, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Commemoration in Lithuania, Holocaust commemoration Lithuania, Holocaust Memory, Jacob Bunka, Kausenai Memorial, Kazys Vitkevečius, Lithuania Tolerance Studies, Plunge, Plunge Holocaust, Plungian, Plungian Holocaust, Plungyan, Plungyan Holocaust, Ronaldas Racinskas, Tolerance studies center Lithuania
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