On the 15 July 2013 centenary of the birth of the illustrious Yiddish poet of Vilna, Abraham Sutzkever (1913–2010), the last active association of Holocaust survivors from Lithuania released the statement below (also available as PDF). It urges organizers, participants, judges and prize winners to avoid being instrumentalized as cover-up props for Holocaust obfuscation. It proposes that they simply issue public statements calling for written public apologies from the Lithuanian government to the defamed Jewish partisans who knew Sutzkever well from the forests of Lithuania and dozens of years of contact in survivor circles. See the related debate on this year’s Sutzkever Prize.
Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage
Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Issue Statement on Sutzkever Prize in Vilnius
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Double Games, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Abraham Sutzkever, Fania Brantsovsky, Joseph Melamed, Rachel Margolis, SLS Jewish Lithuania Sutzkever Prize, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Yitzhak Arad
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Lithuanian Government’s 2013 Vilna Ghetto PR Jamboree
Vilna Ghetto is Back in Focus
But Will “Vilna Ghetto Fest” Include Public Apologies to Defamed Vilna (and Kovno) Ghetto Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Heroes? Invitations to Come Join the Party?
UPDATES:
1. The Secret “Big-Bucks Vilna Ghetto Disneyland Theme Park” Project (minus the Jewish community, minus apologies to the Partisans of Vilna, minus removals of memorials to local Holocaust perpetrators).
2. Renewed International Petition.
3. Ghetto survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance have been criminalized.
4. Government delegation in South Africa trying to pry Disneyland “investment” from unsuspecting South African Jews.
SEVEN SIMPLE SOLUTIONS
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, South Africa
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Charles Adès Fishman Adds Voice, on Yom Hashoah, to Sutzkever Prize Fracas
O P I N I O N
by Charles Adès Fishman
Dear Ed,
I could hardly believe it when I was told that you were participating in the Sutzkever Translation Prize competition as a judge. The Ed Hirsch whose work I’ve read and admired for years—the Ed Hirsch I’ve admired for years—wouldn’t allow himself to be used in a way that will help the Neo-Nazi forces in Lithuania remove the stain of antisemitism from its persecution of individuals who served as Jewish partisans during the Holocaust years.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, United States
Tagged Charles Adès Fishman, Ed Hirsch, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, SLS, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania
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Peter Thabit Jones Issues Open Letter on Sutzkever Translation Prize
O P I N I O N
by Peter Thabit Jones
Dear Mr. Hirsch
As a fellow poet and human being, I implore you to withdraw as a judge in a competition that will be part of a series of events misrepresenting things, in effect for the benefit of certain elements in the Lithuanian government. Alternatively, as suggested by colleagues, a simple requirement that each of the wrongfully defamed Jewish Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance be issued a full and public apology would bring the matter to a rapid close.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, United States
Tagged Ed Hirsch, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish partisans (Holocaust era), Peter Thabit Jones, Sutzkever Translation Prize (2013)
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Arthur Dobrin’s Open Letter to Ed Hirsch
O P I N I O N
by Arthur Dobrin
I am writing to you because it has come to my attention that you are to be the judge in the Avrom Sutzkever Poetry Translation Prize. Many years ago I came across a book of Sutzkever and have used several lines from his poems in a book of mine on bereavement. I was deeply touched by his work and wanted to share it with others.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, United States
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An Open Letter to Ed Hirsch
O P I N I O N
Dear Mr. Hirsch,
Congratulations on your selection as judge of the new literary translation contest named for the eminent late Yiddish poet Avrom (Abraham) Sutzkever (1913-2010). News of the contest was today disseminated far and wide (information affixed below, for readers’ rapid reference, and to help inspire more entries in your competition).
Will prosecutors (and the writers’ union) in Vilnius be told about Avrom Sutzkever’s days with the Soviet partisans?
You may know that in addition to being a major twentieth century Yiddish poet and editor, Sutzkever survived the Holocaust by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join the anti-Nazi Jewish partisans. You may or may not know that elderly Lithuanian Jewish Holocaust survivors, who like Sutzkever escaped certain death by joining the partisans, but who are still alive and relatively well, have been defamed as “war criminals” by the same Lithuanian government that recently invested in a Sutzkever plaque in Vilnius, brought over his Israeli family for festivities, and invests in ever more Jewish and Yiddish PR stunts (complete with honors for compliant foreigners) to camouflage a campaign of revisionism.
This is on top of a disturbing toleration of serious antisemitism, including in recent years, state-sanctioned neo-Nazi marches in the heart of the capital city on independence day, the legalization of public swastikas (the UN Human Rights Committee has commented), and inaction regarding front pages of mass circulation newspapers worthy of the 1930s. The most famous examples in recent years are depictions of the Jew and the Gay controlling the world (2009), and, less than a year ago, of one of the city’s resident rabbis.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Dovid Katz, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, United States, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Abraham Sutzkever, Ed Hirsch, Holocaust in Lithuania, Summer Literary Seminars, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Writers Union in Vilnius
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Simon Wiesenthal Center Laments Yivo’s Betrayals of Jewish Causes for the Sake of Lithuanian State PR
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
reprinted with the author’s permission from today’s Times of Israel
This week, one of the more shameful events in Lithuanian-Jewish relations since the Baltic republic regained independence in 1991 will be hosted in New York by the once-venerable Yivo Institute. Under the heading “Reclaiming the Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today,” the Yiddish research institute will host Markas Zingeris, whom it describes as a “Lithuanian-Jewish poet and writer,” to speak about relations between Jews and Lithuanians since the fall of Communism.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, The Great SLS About-Face, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent, Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Regimes, Markas Zingeris, Yivo, Yivo and Lithuania
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Holocaust Commemoration Vilnius Style — with an Israeli Twist
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
The ceremony today to commemorate Lithuanian Holocaust victims at Ponár, the country’s largest mass murder site, outside the capital city of Vilnius, on the day officially known as Day to Commemorate the Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, went off pretty much as most official commemorations do here: inappropriate and with seeming desperation to focus on any topic except the circumstances of the actual Lithuanian Holocaust—the massive collaboration and participation that led to the country’s having the highest proportion of Holocaust murder in Europe.
Ponár is the site’s Yiddish name. It is today Paneriai and is known as Ponary in Polish.
The official date, the 23rd of September was marked this year on the 24th, apparently so officials wouldn’t have to interrupt their weekend break.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Symbology, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius
Tagged Lithuanian-Israeli Relations, Menachem Begin + Vilnius, Ponar (Paneriai, Ponary), Remigijus Šimašius, Vilna Ghetto commemoration
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Crying Over Dead Jews
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
Lithuania’s Jewish community isn’t immune from the broader issues facing Jewish existence in Eastern Europe and there are the same problems of Jewish identity that crop up in Russia, Bulgaria, Poland and elsewhere. And just as there are Christian Evangelicals and others who support the policies of the right-wing in the State of Israel elsewhere in Europe, there are those same voices among Lithuanian politicians and public figures.
What is perhaps different in Lithuania than elsewhere in Eastern Europe is that this Gentile support for Zionist ideals doesn’t translate into support for the surviving local Jewish community or contribute to a profounder and more sympathetic understanding of the Holocaust.
UPDATE OF 5 AUGUST 2012: This essay was republished with permission in the Algemeiner Journal; in 15min.lt (where it seems to have been taken down, but is still listed in Search); in Jewish Ideas Daily (where it was chosen as one of the editor’s picks for 1 August 2012).
Visitors to Vilnius will see any number of plaques dedicated to famous Jewish residents of Vilnius and several dedicated to the Holocaust. Those who look a little deeper under the surface might find there are a number of agencies, organizations and institutions operating in Vilnius which seemingly are aimed at promoting Jewish history, language and culture. In fact, both the plaques and monuments, and the majority of these “Jewish” organizations, serve as little more than window-dressing and display show-cases the Lithuanian government rolls out as exhibits evidencing Lithuanian sincerity in addressing the incomparable atrocity of the Holocaust.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Double Games, Geoff Vasil, Humor (Of Sorts), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Symbology, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
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Landsbergis. Then and Now.
O P I N I O N
Vytautas Landsbergis is one of the giants of the late twentieth century. Along with Poland’s Lech Wałęsa and then-Czechoslovakia’s Václav Havel, Landsbergis led his people from foreign domination to freedom and democracy. Nothing these gentlemen might later on have said or done to their own legacies, particularly in the subsequent century, can detract from their singular achievements in contributing to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the freedom of the subjugated nations on its western periphery.
Posted in Double Games, Dovid Katz, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Legacy of 23 June 1941, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roma
Tagged Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Jewish + Lithuania, Maceva, SLS (Summer Literary Seminars), Vytautas Landsbergis
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Box Coverage to 5 May 2012: Quisling Litvaks?
It seems to some that the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry continues to seek naive Jewish acolytes to help cover for ongoing obfuscation: pursuit of the Double Genocide model of WWII history (e.g. the “Prague Declaration”), while deflecting attention from: whitewash of the murderous role of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF); projects to actually honor the killers; state-countenanced antisemitism. “Fake Litvak” initiatives include events and op-eds that omit the living Jewish Community of Lithuania, as well as the genuinely valiant members of the Lithuanian parliament who signed the Seventy Years Declaration and were rapidly trashed by the current foreign minister. . .
♦Embassy anoints vassal “King of Sunflower Litvaks” (9 Nov 2011).
♦H. Felstein & A. Oleck in the Jerusalem Post (23 Nov 2011). Replies: D. Katz (28 Nov 2011; 24 Apr 2012).
♦E. Cassedy in Haaretz (12 April 2012).
♦Sunflower Litvaks do the Windy City (15 April 2012). Reply: DefendingHistory.com (15 April 2012).
♦H. Felstein in the Times of Israel (17 April 2012).
♦E. Cassedy in the Baltimore Sun (18 April 2012). Reply: O. Zabludoff (23 April 2012).
DISCUSSION IN VILNEWS.COM (AS HTM)
BUT THE EMBASSY NEVER REPLIED TO THE 2,156 PEOPLE (INCLUDING MANY HUNDREDS OF LITHUANIAN CITIZENS) WHO PETITIONED FOR THE CANCELLATION OF THE CAPITAL’S NEO-NAZI MARCH ON THE NATION’S INDEPENDENCE DAY. IT CONTINUES… RECRUITING FOR THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION.
Posted in Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Rabinowitz-Dorf PR Campaign for Lithuanian Embassy and “Fake Litvaks” Backfires Bigtime
[Updated 3 May 2012] The following is a reprint, including comments up to today, of the 13 April 2012 VilNews.com article “First-time event in Chicago this Sunday, April 15, to address lingering issues affecting Lithuanian-Jewish relations.” This page, as posted today [3 May 2012], is also preserved in webpage format here.
Rabinowitz-Dorf: Did the PR firm sell out Lithuanian Jewry to help the current right-wing government “change” the history of the Holocaust with American Jewish cover, while enabling “Fake Litvaks” to misrepresent themselves as representing the Jewish community in Lithuania?
Posted in American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Media Watch, News & Views, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Use and Abuse of Sugihara, VilNews.com, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Fake Litvaks, Harley Felstein, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish + Lithuania, Rabbinowitz/Dorf + Lithuania, Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications, Zygimantas Pavilionis
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Baltic “Double Genocide” Discourse Slips into Naive American Jewish Articles on Lithuania
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Can history be bought up by even a small state’s nationalist government that has talked itself into the idea that revision of history and wide acceptance of that revision is somehow a national cause? It becomes a serious issue when that state is willing to invest heavily in the enterprise, at a time when the targeted influential foreigners are far from the issues at hand and easily manipulated.
Posted in American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States
Tagged Adrienne Oleck, American Jewish Committee, Antisemitism in Lithuania, Double Genocide, Harley Felstein, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Obfuscation, Mervyn Danker
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Lithuanian Government Calls for “Bigger Investments from Litvaks” as South Africa’s Glasenberg is Welcomed
Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore: Celebrated Litvak scion is feted by government operatives in Vilnius
According to a BNS news report released today (full text below), the Lithuanian prime minister’s advisor Mykolas Majauskas reported that discussions were held with Glencore’s CEO Ivan Glasenberg concerning plans to inspire more Litvaks to invest in the country. Mr. Majauskas also claimed that “some Litvaks are considering buying farms in Lithuania in order to take active part in communal activities.”
DefendingHistory.com takes the view that Litvak investment should progress in tandem with genuine progress on Lithuanian-Jewish issues, and not as long as the present “dual-track” (“double game”) policies continue to be applied. Ruses attempted have on occasion entailed usurpation of the Litvak identity by government agencies.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, News & Views, South Africa, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Glencore, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ivan Glasenberg, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Mykolas Majauskas
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Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Manipulates ‘Chicago Litvaks’
The following news box was posted on page one to the end of 15 April 2012:
Foreign Ministry’s Litvaks?
“Sunflower Litvaks” who “resell” Lithuanian Foreign Ministry “Holocaust history” ran a key PR event Sunday 15 April in the Windy City. Their claim that the Lithuanian Jewish Community was represented is refuted by the actual LJC in Vilnius.
THE LITVAK HERITAGE HIJACKED?
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, News & Views, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?
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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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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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List of Lithuanian Government’s ‘Fake Litvaks’ is Leaked to the Media
This journal reported on 6 September 2010 on an elaborate plot by the Lithuanian government’s ‘Jewish manipulation department’, as the informal grouping is known in Vilnius diplomatic circles, to usurp (some would say ‘hijack’) the ethnonym Litvak and abuse it to cover for — and facilitate — the state’s policies on Double Genocide and antisemitism with ‘Jewish’ projects.
Did any of the ‘Fake Litvaks’ actually sign the 2011 public letter protesting the capital’s neo-Nazi march?
Posted in Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, News & Views, Vilna's Great Synagogue & its Courtyard (Shúlheyf), What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
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Has LRG Media (UK) been Compromised?
The prestigious British-based LRG Media, a multimedia company with an impressive record of achievements and awards, has apparently been targeted by certain elements in Lithuanian government circles as the latest ‘Naive Useful Foreign Entity’ to help make respectable internationally the state-sponsored campaigns for Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, and selective toleration of current antisemitism.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Arts, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Film, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged David Wachs, Fake Litvak Forum, Litvak Multimedia Project, LRG Media
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