Litvak Affairs

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LITVAK STUDIES

Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism



 OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA

OPINION

Today’s announcement that Lithuanian prime minister Gintautas Paluckas has set up a Working Group to study the rise in antisemitism is welcomed by all people of good faith. He has assembled a group of highly accomplished public figures, led by the PM’s advisor Alexander Radchenko, who will report to the PM by 1 June 2025 on a “plan of action for combating antisemitism, xenophobia, and other forms of incitement to discord; and, on the encouragement of Jewish life”. Among the Working Group’s members are deputy minister of internal affairs Gintaras Aliksandravičius; director of the Department of National Minorities Dainius Babilas; Head of the Culture Department of the Utena District Municipality Jūratė Brasiūnienė; member of the Vilnius City Council Vygintas Gasparavičius; chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky; head of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Martynas Lukoševičius; deputy minister of Education, Science and Sports Jonas Petkevičius. Congratulations and godspeed to them and their colleagues.

The proximate event — inclusion of an openly antisemitic led party in the national governing coalition — that led to the Working Group’s formation needs no repetitive recital here. For over a decade and a half, Defending History prides itself on covering the ground that others may overlook (rather than repeat what is being done out there). Nevertheless, one generic comment is perhaps apropos: To be a working group, not a PR diversion, the new entity will frankly need to comment on its own convenor’s, the prime minister’s, decision to lead a coalition government that includes an antisemitic party, the first time this has happened in any Baltic country’s post-soviet history. Or is the working group precluded from commenting on a rise in antisemitism precipitated by the prime minister’s indefensible decision that has legitimized bigtime what had been marginal claptrap? That would render it akin to the proverbial case of beating the dickens out of a person, causing huge bodily and mental harm, and then offering for the cyberworld of the  contemporary press release, a little band-aid in a pristine plastic packet.

In the usual constructive spirit of providing timely input in the public space, the Defending History community offers its proverbial two cents in the form of — three points.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism

Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva



FILM | ARTS | OPINION | SHEDUVA | SAULIUS BERŽINIS

FILM REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

The history of Lithuania during the Second World War is complex and tragic. After short-lived continued independence in 1939-1940, following the playing out of the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the USSR effectively took over Lithuania in June 1940 and established a harsh regime. Tens of thousands of inhabitants were then deported to Siberia, with big blocks of victims just one week prior to Germany’s June 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazi invaders and high numbers of local collaborators slaughtered 96.4% of the Jewish population of the country, over 200,000 people, one of the highest rates of the genocide of the Jews in Holocaust-era Europe. In 1944, the USSR liberated the country from the Germans, and then went on to occupy it until its renewed independence in 1990. It has since rapidly evolved into a successful EU and NATO state.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva

Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation



FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | ANTISEMITISMLITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

The following is a full translation of the recent email blast published in Defending History in the original Lithuanian on 31 Jan. For background see the English introduction there, as well as reports and discussion on the DH editor’s Facebook page. For a full chronology of the now nineteen year old campaign against Holocaust survivors who survived by joining the anti-Nazi resistance see DH’s Blaming the Victims page.  Obersvers have noted that the German teacher recruited to launch the campaign of defamation against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) and Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis, I. Tumavičiūtė in a January 2008 article in a far-right antisemitic daily (original; English translation) reappears this week as the campaign, apparently including the Genocide Center (GRRLC) and its director, is duly relaunched. Note the text contains the link to the online clip from a Soviet-era documentary where Fania Brantsovsky’s remarks about regrettable civilian casualties during the partisans’ battles against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania is maliciously taken out of context to imply targeting of civilians and/or her own participation in the battle described. The youtube video clip, that has been up for seven years is entitled “isgama  branvcovskaja” that translates as “The Degenerate Brantsovsky” or “Scum Brantsovsky.” More background of “polite” state support for the defamation of Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance includes the public statement for a video documentary by the executive director of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”). The participation of the state-sponsored Genocide Center in this week’s events is apparently meant to give the new campaign an air of legitimacy, during a time of much-heightened antisemitic sentiment.

 

https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/

COMMEMORATION of Kaniūkai Village Residents, Murdered by Soviet Partisans in 1944

February 2, 2025

10:30 AM – Holy Mass at St. Ignatius Church (Vilnius)
11:30 AM – Departure for Kaniūkai village cemetery (Šalčininkai district) after the Holy Mass
2:00 PM – Start of the commemoration event

Participants:

Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, General Director of GRRCL

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation

International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery


[last update]


See Note below


Videos Online

Written statements:

Rabbi Elchonon Baron

Ruta Bloshtein

Rabbi S. J. Feffer

Bernard Fryshman

Dovid Katz

Andrius Kulikauskas

Sid Leiman

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Blaming the Victims: Documents and Sources


UPDATED 31 Jan. 2025 (originally published 21 Aug. 2010). See also (older, not updated) Responses page.

2006    2007    2008    2009    2010    2011   2012    2013    2014    2015    2016    2017   2025

__

Preface

The campaign of defamation by Lithuanian state prosecutors and allied elites (particularly in the Genocide Center and the antisemitic right-wing press) has resulted in a number of cherished Holocaust Survivors being smeared as “war criminals” without a single charge ever having been leveled against anybody. Launched in 2006, the campaign, abusing tools such as “pre-trial investigations” and leaks to the media, have sought to brand as “war criminals” the heroes of the war against Hitler. It grew in 2011 with the addition of equally perverse  “libel charges,” launched with fanfare when Interpol (!) was sent to disturb in Tel Aviv the elected head of the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world. Then, in 2013, the state’s “red-brown commission” defamed one of Vilnius’s last survivors on equally perverse grounds, all the while putting on “Holocaust events” for naive Western audiences, usually funded by the (unknowing) Lithuanian taxpayer, in venues  including London, New York, Toronto, and Vilnius.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Blaming the Victims: Documents and Sources

Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)?



FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

The following email blast with its links to online sites, forthcoming events in Vilnius, and at its end, a link to an old  and an out-of-context defamatory video extract on youtube, has been widely recirculated this week. It comes on the heels of the state Jewish museum’s ill-conceived event  legitimizing the director of the state-funded Genocide Center, an institution that champions glorification of collaborators, defamation of victims and history revisionism in the far-right spirit of East European ultranationalism. See also the shameful longtime position of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” and Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Resource PageFania Brantsovsky section; summary of state prosecutors’ campaign of defamation; index of topics and videos posted at the time of her death, at age 102, last September, including a call for a formal state apology to her family and those of fellow Holocaust survivors who became heroes of the free world by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join up with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania. Fania’s last wish was for the “Jewish Partisan Fort” outside Vilnius to be restored and preserved for future generations. More on editor’s Facebook page (with discussion in the comments that follow).

[UPDATE OF 4 FEB. 2025: See now full translation of the text below, and further discussion on Dovid Katz’s Facebook page].


https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/

Kaniūkų kaimo gyventojų, 1944 m. nužudytų raudonųjų partizanų,
MINĖJIMAS
2025 m. vasario 2 d.

10.30 val. šv. Mišios Šv. Ignoto bažnyčioje (Vilniuje)
11.30 val. po šv. Mišių vykstame į Kaniūkų kaimo kapinaites (Šalčininkų r.)
14.00 val. renginio pradžia
Renginyje dalyvauja:
– LGGRTC gen. direktorius dr. Arūnas Bubnys
– Seimo narys prof. Valdas Rakutis
– Šalčininkų r. atstovas
– Karaliaus Mindaugo šaulių 10-osios rinktinės Vilniaus (1003) kuopos vadas dr. Kostas Ivanauskas
ir kuopos šauliai
– Nacionalinis susivienijimas
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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)?

Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?



GENOCIDE CENTER & MUSEUMA. BUBNYS | NOREIKA WORSHIP | ŠKIRPA WORSHIPMUSEUMS

OPINION

The Defending History community, which has expressed profound admiration for recent major progress of Lithuania’s state Jewish museum (“Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History”), is saddened that the museum has chosen to commemorate this year’s International Holocaust Commemoration Day by a 30 Jan. event featuring revisionist historian Dr. A. Bubnys, director of the “Holocaust fixing” Genocide Center (who proudly and publicly poses with placards of leading Holocaust collaborators J. Noreika and K. Škirpa). Without including in the panel a single Lithuanian champion of truthtelling. Let alone a single Jewish member of the panel. Let alone families of survivors and victims.

To pour salt on the wounds, the announced topic is “Effectiveness of the Book as a Media in the Wars of Historical Memory.” Yes, the author of Genocide Center produced and published books at the vanguard of the new incarnation of Holocaust Denial via obfuscation, distortion, “Double Genocide” revisionism, victim-blaming and perpetrator-worship, is on offer from an EU/NATO member’s “state Jewish museum” as its way of marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For shame.

We call on the museum to cancel immediately this ill-conceived stunt, whose prime political purpose is an unadulterated attempt at legitimizing East European glorification of Holocaust collaborators and the ultranationalist rewriting of history via partnerships with ostensibly “Jewish entities.” Same tired old playbook, and it won’t work. There is, moreover, the insult for victims and survivors and the pain hoisted on their families today. This is grave disrespect toward the citizens of Lithuania whose hard earned tax euros support both institutions so generously. As for it all invoking the name of the Gaon of Vilna — he is surely twisting in his grave.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

The Saga of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva: In Spite of ‘Ban’, Copies are Circulating Widely


[LATEST UPDATE; ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: 27 APRIL 2023]

OPINION|FILM|BOLD CITIZENS|SAULIUS BERŽINIS|SHEDUVA | MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL

Partial chronology of recent events in the life and times of modern Lithuania’s first major Holocaust truth teller, documentary film maker

Saulius Beržinis

JUMP TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

TO UPDATES; LATEST UPDATE

FOREIGN JOURNALIST’S ARTICLE WITHDRAWN FROM PUBLICATION

DEFENDING HISTORY’S BERŽINIS SECTION

What is it all about?

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Saga of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva: In Spite of ‘Ban’, Copies are Circulating Widely

Antisemitism, Holocaust Revisionism, and Anti-Israelism in Modern Lithuania



OPINION  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM  |  LITHUANIAN JEWISH LIFE 

by Arkady Kurliandchik

Reflecting on the current situation in Lithuania, where open antisemites do not hesitate to reveal themselves as such, I am trying to understand the origins of such behavior.

According to some historians, approximately 20,000 people in Lithuania actively participated in the extermination of Jews during World War II. And those who did not personally engage in the killings but considered such extermination to be just and commendable numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Antisemitic propaganda did not originate in Germany, but before the war, it became particularly sophisticated there. Jews were portrayed as insects that needed to be exterminated. And then this initiative was adopted and further developed in Lithuania.

Viewpoint of a Jewish citizen in today’s Vilnius

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arkady Kurliandchik, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Antisemitism, Holocaust Revisionism, and Anti-Israelism in Modern Lithuania

Rabbi Elchonon Baron calls on Lithuania’s President & Presumptive PM Not to Enable New Coalition Government that Includes Openly Antisemitic Party



OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | RABBI BARON SECTION

SEE UPDATES ON FRONT PAGE

by Rabbi Elchonon Baron


Honorable Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania

Below is a letter I sent to Mr. Gintauatas Paluckas this morning from Vilnius. We stand tonight on the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht in a country, Lithuania, that witnessed the annihilation of 96.4% of its Jewry just eight decades ago. In the name of civilization and a free and modern Europe, unshackled by ancient endemic antisemitism and all the allied ills that come with it, I implore you not to allow the formation of a government that includes the openly antisemitic “The Dawn of the Nemunas” party. It is a slippery and dangerous path for any European country to take, and greatly risks arousing the centuries-old European demon of antisemitism in Lithuania and beyond. It will not be understood by anyone in the world any differently.

 

Has Europe Forgotten So Soon?

Open Letter to Presumptive Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas:

I am writing from Vilna just as a bona fide European Pogrom on Israeli soccer fans plays out in Amsterdam, and a day before the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Just over twelve hours ago I heard the shocking news that you and your Social Democrat party have invited “The Dawn of the Nemunas” headed by the avowed court-confirmed antisemite Remigijus Žemaitaitis (who has claimed that the Jews have killed the Lithuanians—not the reverse) to join your coalition to govern Lithuania, and I was too distressed to respond immediately.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron calls on Lithuania’s President & Presumptive PM Not to Enable New Coalition Government that Includes Openly Antisemitic Party

Vilnius “Jews-for-Jesus” Conference to Feature Verbickienė and Toleikis



OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | ANTISEMITISM | VILNIUS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

by Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—For centuries, missionaries have cunningly preyed on small, weak, fractured and vulnerable Jewish communities, cleverly roping in widely known and respected figures to lend a veneer of academic or intellectual legitimacy. At issue is whether the majority Christian culture is prepared to accept as equals a minority whose theology differs, without campaigns to “recruit souls” which implies the worst about the faith and people whose souls need to be “saved.” Indeed, the necessary conclusion about the inherent evil (in the case at hand historically including the charge of deicide) of the unconverted played its role in the mindset that was among the conceptual prerequisites for the Holocaust. Around 96% of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens were massacred. Some local priests risked everything to hide and rescue a Jewish neighbor. Others gave pep talks to the local shooters ensuring them that they were firing at the Devil himself. The issue is one that calls for humility, intercultural respect, and human sensitivity.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius “Jews-for-Jesus” Conference to Feature Verbickienė and Toleikis

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja): 1922-2024



FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | OBITUARIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | JEWISH PARTISAN HEROES DEFAMED BY VILNIUS PROSECUTORS

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky: “My last wish is that the Jewish Partisan Fort, where we lived, and where we fought the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania, be preserved and restored so future generations will know of our resistance against genocide, and so we honor all those who fell fighting for the freedom of all of us.”

Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: Saga of 2008. Call to preserve “Fania’s fort in the forest” for future generations.

See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section: how Vilna’s most beloved Yiddish icon was pursued by authorities hell bent on revising Holocaust history.

Update: See now the Following Fania project

Fania’s family, heirs and students deserve a formal state apology for the shameful campaign of prosecution and defamation (chronology) against her and the other Jewish partisan veterans, all in the spirit of “Double Genocide” Holocaust revisionism (video sample). Follow the history to see also the inspirational leading role in Vilnius of then Irish ambassador to Lithuania Dónal Denham; also Austria’s Andrea Wicke, Norway’s Steinar Gil, UK’s  Simon Butt, USA’s John A. Cloud. All in support of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015). The historical juxtaposition of the campaign against Jewish partisans and Holocaust revisionism is perhaps best symbolized by the occurrence on single date — 3 June 2008 — of Ambassador Dónal Denham’s reception honoring Ms. Brantsovsky in Vilnius and the proclaiming of the Prague Declaration in Vilnius. Historian and former Yad Vashem chairman Yitzhak Arad, himself a defamed partisan, would go on to research Lithuanian officials’ role in the Prague Declaration.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries | Comments Off on Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja): 1922-2024

Arkady Kurliandchik’s Heroic Stand at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery



OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | ARKADY KURLIANDCHIK

VILNIUS—Last Thursday, 22 August, Defending History distributed the link to an ultranationalist announcement of a demonstration scheduled for the following day at the Old Vina Jewish Cemetery. The demonstration would be against not, directly speaking, the preservation of the Jewish cemetery (though that is the upshot), but against the recent “compromise” that would effectively in any event destroy the cemetery forever: keeping the hated Soviet monstrosity and turning it into a memorial center with exhibits 75% Jewish and 25% Lithuanian. As pointed out by Defending History, this is in any case a (disguised) new events center with seating for thousands who would clap, cheer and flush lavatories surrounded by thousands of extant graves.

Far-right demonstrators stand atop thousands of extant Jewish graves at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. To prevent preservation and restoration of the old  cemetery they seem to have just decided that a hated Soviet building is in fact a symbol of Lithuanian independence (!). Defending History photo by William Adan Pahl.

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Posted in Arkady Kurliandchik, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Arkady Kurliandchik’s Heroic Stand at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Kaunesia: Travelling the Dark Memory Lanes of Kaunas


 


OPINION | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS | ANTISEMITISM

by Adam J. Sacks

It says something that the only “Devil Museum” in the world is to be found in Kaunas, Lithuania. This city sometimes also known as Kovno, is the most Lithuanian of cities, the capital of independent Lithuania in the interwar years, and still today, the more fully Lithuanian when contrasted to the more multicultural current capital of Vilnius. The Russian, Polish, and English languages, for instance, which are fairly common in Vilnius, are nary to be heard in Kaunas. This “Devil’s Museum” is a global and learned collection of 3000 figurines from 70 countries made by a prominent Lithuanian professor and is certainly a landmark and a must-see. The devil is the most dominant figure in Lithuanian folklore. This figure apparently has a thousand names in the ancient Sanskrit-related Lithuanian language, with over 400 places names and 5000 legends featuring this character. While surveying the collection, so many features of these legends pop out: the devil is rich, often a thief, one who pours coins, who controls the vodka trade, imparts powers of virtuosity on the violin, and who even, at times, cooks humans.

In the accompanying notes, one learns that the devil is often depicted as a nobleman, sometimes even as a German. Yet nowhere in the entire museum however is even the word Jew, or Jewish, even mentioned. Needless to say, the physiognomy in the overwhelming majority of the figurines closely matches the hallmarks and the stereotype of the antisemitic rendering of “the Jew.” The characteristic markings could not be more clear: facial features such as the long or hooked nose, thick lips, flaring nostrils, the strangely squat or wiry physique, beady eyes and the deep eyebrow ridges. This figure is also well known, inter alia, from the centuries of representations of Jews per se featured during Lithuania’s end-of-winter, Mardi Gras-like Užgavėnės festival.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Kaunesia: Travelling the Dark Memory Lanes of Kaunas

English Translation of Lithuania’s TV Evening News Coverage of Recent Demonstration to Rescue the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery



 OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW MUSEUM/MEMORIAL PROJECT | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

VILNIUS—The following is a full translation of the July 25th Lithuanian television evening news segment, on its flagship Panorama program, of that day’s demonstration led by the Vilnius Jewish Community against plans to permanently erase the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery by refurbishing (instead of demolishing) a hated Soviet eyesore. Demolition would make way for the respectful restoration of the most important Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian lands of Northeastern Europe.

JUMP TO TRANSLATION. TO SCREENSHOTS.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on English Translation of Lithuania’s TV Evening News Coverage of Recent Demonstration to Rescue the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Welcome to Participants in This Year’s Revived Vilnius Summer Program!


[LAST UPDATE: 9 AUG. 2024]

OPINION | YIDDISH | GREEN HOUSE | LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT

Those of the founders of the Vilnius Summer Program in Yiddish, twenty-six years ago, in July 1998, who are still around and active will today wish to extend the heartiest of welcomes and the best of wishes and godspeed to all the participants of this summer’s mini-revival (two weeks rather than four, no university credit options, but with every perspective of equaling and surpassing the original conception in the years ahead). The new course has issued its program of studies (see the 1998 program for some perspective). The instructors are the well known Yiddish teachers Alec Eliezer Burko, Dov-Ber Boris Kerler, Yuri Vedenyapin, and Anna Verschik. All were at one time or another students of the original course’s founder, underlying the venerable Vilna tradition of chains of learning over the years. In the case of revived Yiddish studies in Vilnius, an early catalyst was the Oxford-Vilnius agreement of 1991 that enabled Lithuanian students to study Yiddish and Judaic studies at Oxford University from 1991 onwards.

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Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcome to Participants in This Year’s Revived Vilnius Summer Program!

First Impressions of Vilnius’s New ‘Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews’



OPINION | MUSEUMS | ARTS | LITVAK AFFAIRS

 

by Dovid Katz

The creators of Vilnius’s new Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews (MCILJ or for short — “Litvak Culture Museum”), which opened its doors last January, have rapidly earned their place of honor in the 700 or so years of Lithuanian Jewish history. They have achieved a notable advance in encapsulating — in broad outline — the scope, the breadth, and many of the contours of internal diversity of one of the world’s more intriguing and complex stateless cultures, right in the city that had for centuries been its symbolic capital. That heritage is part of the larger Ashkenazic heritage that is itself often undercredited and understudied internationally, particularly among modern Jews themselves, for whom the twin pillars of modern Israel and of modern forms of religion occasionally leave no room for the civilization of their own forebears. That it was largely annihilated in its homelands during the Holocaust makes such a task more daunting still.

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Posted in Arts, Dovid Katz, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on First Impressions of Vilnius’s New ‘Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews’

Vilnius Jewish Community Leads Dignified Protest at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Protesting Plans for ‘Memorial Complex’ in Soviet Ruin



 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | INVOLVEMENT OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE (AJC) | CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS (CER) | THE “CPJCE” CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES

Rabbi Elchonon Baron speaking to Lithuanian media at today’s Vilnius Jewish Community demonstration against plans to effectively erase the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery via a memorial & museum complex. For some reason, LRT (their microphone visible) failed to even mention their interview with Rabbi Baron in their report. Video by William Adan Pahl.

VILNIUS—The Vilnius Jewish Community, the democratically run Jewish community representing most of today’s Jewish citizens in Lithuania, today led a small, dignified protest at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the storied Shnípishok section of Vilnius, today’s Šnipiškės in modern, elegant Vilnius), calling on the government to cancel plans for a “memorial complex cum museum” (potentially with seating for thousands — in the middle of a cemetery!) in the hated and derelict Soviet “Sports Palace.” Instead, the demonstrators made clear the monstrosity should come down and the cemetery, the most important Jewish cemetery in all the Lithuanian lands, and one of the most sacred to Litvaks worldwide, be lovingly restored.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius Jewish Community Leads Dignified Protest at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Protesting Plans for ‘Memorial Complex’ in Soviet Ruin

Opinion: American Jewish Committee (AJC) Needs to Look Again at its Involvement in Lithuania



OPINION | LITHUANIAN MISADVENTURES OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE (AJC) | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS (CER) | THE “CPJCE”  | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES


VILNIUS—The American Jewish Committee (AJC), founded in 1906, is one of the world’s accomplished advocacy groups for Jewish, and more broadly, minority and human rights causes, in addition to other lofty missions. Those who revere and support it now need to ask frank questions about, one is sorry to say, a disturbingly consistent infidelity to Jewish causes in one country, Lithuania. The lamentable record speaks for itself. It has for decades been represented by its  director of international Jewish affairs, Rabbi Andrew Baker, a recipient of multiple grand awards from a number of presidents of Lithuania. In the AJC’s name and with its wherewithal, he has consistently let down, first, the living small-c Jewish community of Lithuania; second, the true narrative of the Holocaust when it is under attack by the forces of Holocaust obfuscation, distortion and revisionism; and, finally, the preservation of Jewish cemeteries. We do not ascribe to him any nefarious motives or conscious malice on any of these counts. He is not the first, nor the last American Jewish organization bigwig to be mobilized (and a little intoxicated by a slew of high Lithuanian government medals) as a kind of “useful Jewish functionary” to provide Jewish cover and cred for government policies in countries where, in post-Holocaust Eastern Europe, local Jewish communities can be small, weak, and demographically challenged.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Opinion: American Jewish Committee (AJC) Needs to Look Again at its Involvement in Lithuania

Exactly How Many Thousands of People Will Fit into Events at Planned ‘Museum in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery’?



OPINION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | INVOLVEMENT OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE (AJC)CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS (CER) | THE “CPJCE”  | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES


VILNIUS—The tragi-comic charade of the “museum & memorial complex” in the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius, capital of modern democratic Lithuania) took another bizarre turn today. A triumphant BNS press release, speaking for the government, gives the misimpression of universal agreement to setting up a museum in the huge Soviet ruin plonked in the cemetery’s heart. This would be the only museum on the planet in a Jewish cemetery. It would be surrounded by thousands of extant Jewish graves (not stones or memorial houselets; those were all pilfered by the Soviets; a vast number can be reconstructed thanks to photos and transcriptions from the most important Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian lands).

The media coverage did not so much as mention the renewed and mounting international opposition, or the public protest and dissent issued by a single courageous member of the state commission (“Working Group”) appointed to come up with solutions. Why not? Does not a free media opt to inform readers of an extant second opinion?

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Exactly How Many Thousands of People Will Fit into Events at Planned ‘Museum in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery’?