GENOCIDE CENTER & MUSEUM | A. BUBNYS | NOREIKA WORSHIP | ŠKIRPA WORSHIP | MUSEUMS
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OPINION
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Museums
Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?
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 Dr. Arunas Bubnys, Holocaust Revisionism, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, Vilnius Jewish Museum
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New ‘Lost Shtetl’ Museum Allegedly Blocks Public Release of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva. But the Film (and Trailer) are Circulating Widely
[LATEST UPDATE; ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: 27 APRIL 2023]
OPINION|FILM|BOLD CITIZENS|SAULIUS BERŽINIS|SHEDUVA | MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL
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Partial chronology of recent events in the life and times of modern Lithuania’s first major Holocaust truth teller, documentary film maker
Saulius Beržinis
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JUMP TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE
TO UPDATES; LATEST UPDATE
FOREIGN JOURNALIST’S ARTICLE WITHDRAWN FROM PUBLICATION
DEFENDING HISTORY’S BERŽINIS SECTION
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What is it all about?
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 "Litvak World", DigitalInk (Brussels), Dingęs štetlas, Ellex Valiunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ivan Glasenberg, Jerusalem of the North, Jonas Heraklis Dovydaitis, Museum of the Lost Shtetl, Roberta Grossman, Roberta Grossman + Lithuania, Roberta Grossman + Seduva (Sheduva), Rolandas Valiunas, S. Kanovich (Brussels), Saulius Berzinis, Šeduva (Sheduva), Sheduva (Seduva) Shtetl Museum, Strk Solutions (Brussels)
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Flanders and the Remembrance of the Victims of the German Wars of Aggression Against Belgium
OPINION | HISTORY | BELGIUM | MUSEUMS
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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A few days ago I was flabbergasted when I read a news item in the FOCUS website for West-Flanders where I live. On Saturday, August 24, 2024, in Zeebrugge there had been a commemoration ceremony for the crews of two German submarines (U-5 and UC-14) sunk during World War I and just recently identified. This official commemoration ceremony took place in the presence of the German ambassador Martin Kotthaus and the Governor for West-Flanders Carl Decaluwé: “More than one hundred years ago, the crews of these two submarines died in the middle of a horrible war. I am very grateful that today we can grieve for the dead together as friends and partners,” declared the current German ambassador.
It is perhaps interesting to remind readers that in the past Flanders had already made a wrong choice regarding the only illustration for World War I within the ‘Flemish Canon’ (see my article, “Wrong Choice for New “Flemish Canon”). On that occasion, the choice was of a statue of a grieving couple situated in the German military cemetery of Vladslo in Flanders, a couple grieving for their slain son Peter, a German soldier who had died while his regiment attacked Ypres in October 1914, just when the danger of the whole of Belgium being overrun by the German army had been at its highest.
Posted in Belgium, History, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet
Tagged Flanders and Nazism, Flanders and World War II, Memory of both world wars in Belgium, Memory of WWI and WWII in Flanders, politics of remembrance in Flanders, Roland Binet
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Kaunesia: Travelling the Dark Memory Lanes of Kaunas
OPINION | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS | ANTISEMITISM
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by Adam J. Sacks
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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.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE)
Tagged Adam J. Sacks, Chiune Sugihara, Christoph Dieckmann, Devil's Museum (Kaunas), Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish Kaunas, Kaunesia, Lietukis Garage, Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), Partisan Alley (Kaunas), Uzgavenes, Žmuidzinavičiaus muziejus, Žmuidzinavičius Museum
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First Impressions of Vilnius’s New ‘Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews’
OPINION | MUSEUMS | ARTS | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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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.
Posted in Arts, Dovid Katz, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius
Tagged Dovid Katz, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jenny Biber, Jewish museum (Vilnius), Joseph Levinson, LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), Leyzer Ran, Litvak Culture Museum, Litvak Identity Museum, Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews, Polin Museum (name), Rachel Kostanian, Rachel Margolis, Yiddish in Lithuania
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“Museum of the Lost Shtetl” Forces Removal of Saulius Beržinis’s 5 Minute Youtube Trailer Featured on Yom HaShoah
OPINION | FILM | BOLD CITIZENS | SAULIUS BERŽINIS | SHEDUVA | MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL
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Five Minutes & Six Seconds:
The Satanic Verses of Sheduva, Lithuania?
Our take:
We sincerely regret that the directors, donors, and staff of the “Museum of the Lost Shtetl” in the town of Sheduva, Lithuania have not yet spoken out freely and publicly about removal from Youtube of the five minute and six second trailer to Saulius Beržinis’s classic Holocaust documentary on Sheduva:
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged Documentary film "Petrified Time", Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuania, Museum of the Lost Shtetl, Saulius Berzinis, Sheduva (Seduva)
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Yom HaShoah 2024: Please can you spend five minutes and six seconds to watch something?
OPINION | COMMEMORATIONS | EVENTS | SHEDUVA & ITS NEW MUSEUM
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by Dovid Katz
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[UPDATE OF 10 MAY 2024: YOUTUBE FILM TRAILER REMOVED BY “MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL”]
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Dovid Katz, Events, Museums, News & Views, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged Lithuania (Holocaust), Museum of the Lost Shtetl, Saulius Berzinis, Sheduva (Seduva), Yom HaShoah 2024, Yom HaShoah Lithuania
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Kopa Studio II Issues Statement on Temporary Link for Free Online Viewing of Film on Sheduva Holocaust
FILM | SAULIUS BERŽINIS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | FREE SPEECH | MUSEUMS | SHEDUVA
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VILNIUS—Kopa Studio II in Vilnius, the continuation of the fabled Kopa Studio that for thirty years has provided the gold standard in historical truth on the Holocaust in Lithuania (and has had to be reconstituted after a campaign of embittered legal action from some “powerful forces”), released the following statement today:
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Dear Friends, Dear Enemies!
Today, 16 June 2023 at 12 noon Vilnius time, we have posted on Vimeo, until 22 June, an informal, non-commercial private share of the first version of Petrified Time, the documentary film on Sheduva (Šeduva) we were privileged to have worked on for years in partnership with the partnering museum.
For the link please apply to Kopa Studio II (at: berkopa@hotmail.com) or to Defending History (at: info@defendinghistory.com), or to Saulius Beržinis or Dovid Katz on their Facebook pages (via Messenger only, please). As ever, we will be grateful for your feedback on the first version of the film.
Saulius Beržinis, Sigitas Siudika
Kopa Studio II
Posted in Arts, Film, Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
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Would Your Heritage Tour Group Coming to Vilnius Like to See an Informal Draft of the ‘Banned’ Film on the Holocaust in Sheduva?
OPINION | FILM | FREE SPEECH | BOLD CITIZENS | SAULIUS BERŽINIS | SHEDUVA | IT PAYS TO DEFEND HISTORY
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VILNIUS—The Defending History community here in Vilnius was proud today again to be a partner, with the non-profit Kopa Studio II and visiting cultural and academic groups, in helping organize informal, free, non-commercial, viewings of the film Petrified Time, which contains the “Satanic Verses of Sheduva” — the historically invaluable eyewitness testimony by the last witnesses to the Lithuanian Holocaust (themselves, now, a few years later, gone too). Filmed by award winning Lithuanian documentary film maker Saulius Beržinis the film is tied up in litigation launched by the “Museum of the Lost Shtetl” in Sheduva, and spearheaded by the museum’s executive director in Brussels, in a lawsuit conducted by a top Vilnius law firm, and ultimately paid for by a South African origin billionaire in Switzlerland. News and updates of the saga here.
What is success when defending history?
Defending History thinks it’s a major success when dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people are gradually being able to watch a film that very rich and powerful forces are effectively (not “officially”) seeking to ban. If your heritage, roots or Jewish-interest tour group is coming to Vilnius in the coming months and might be interested in a private, informal viewing of a draft first version only of a remarkable film effectively banned at present, please be in touch with Defending History (info@defendinghistory.com). To inquire about future online “viewing windows” please be in touch with Kopa Studio II (berkopa@hotmail.com).
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Film, Free Speech & Democracy, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged Holocaust in Sheduva, Museum of the Lost Shtetl (Sheduva), Petrified Time, Saulius Berzinis
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Lithuanian Holocaust Remembered in Wollongong, Australia
EVENTS | LITHUANIA | HISTORY | MUSEUMS
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by Michael Samaras
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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—More than 100 people attended the Wollongong Art Gallery to hear Professor Konrad Kwiet, resident historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum, deliver a public lecture on the Holocaust in Lithuania and the wartime role of Bronius ‘Bob’ Sredersas.
Wollongong Art Gallery audience listens to Professor Konrad Kwiet on the Lithuanian Holocaust. Photo: Michael Samaras.
Posted in Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Michael Samaras, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Bronius 'Bob' Sredersas, Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Michael Samaras, Professor Konrad Kwiet, Sydney Jewish Museum, Wollongong
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We Knew Roza
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in memory of
Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023)
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She died faster than a match burns out. Dumbfounded, we are trying to understand her place in our lives, and in Jewish culture, to which she devoted so much energy. The Jewish Museum in Lithuania has a long-suffering history. It burned, and was plundered, and ceased to exist, opened and closed many times… There were always experienced workers, Torah connoisseurs who knew Hebrew and, of course, Yiddish.
And suddenly, after World War II, only a few of these specialists remained alive. And in 1949 the museum, where writers, journalists and other cultural figures had already settled, the Soviet authorities again closed the museum and dispersed its collections, all that had miraculously survived during the war years, distributing it to various museums in Lithuania. Jewish culture was rapidly destroyed. Yiddish writers either went to camps, like all “rootless cosmopolitans,” or mastered some applied professions, while others began to write in Lithuanian. In a rare Jewish family did they continue to speak máme-loshn (Yiddish). Parents among themselves — yes, but with children in Russian or in Lithuanian.
Posted in Arts, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Obituaries, Roza Bieliauskienė
Tagged Dalia Epstein, Dalija Epšteinaitė, Jews ih Lithuania, Roza Bieliauskiene, Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum in Vilnius
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Roza Bieliauskienė (1946 – 2023): Cofounder of Lithuania’s Jewish Museum, Longtime Chief Curator, Educator, Specialist on Litvak Artists
ROZA BIELIAUSKIENE | OBITUARIES | MUSEUMS
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The following is a revised text of Dovid Katz’s obituary that appeared on his Facebook page today.
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Roza Bieliauskienė (1946-2023)
The world of Jewish Vilna and Litvaks everywhere mourn in deep sorrow the untimely sudden death of our dear Roza (Róze, Reyzl) Bieliauskienė, beloved scholar of Lithuanian Jewish art, long time historian, museum curator, educator, guide and a loyal friend unafraid of untoward local politics and its boycotts. Whether for an old friend or a foreigner she’d never seen before, Roza would rush to help anyone research anything if it was in the field of Lithuanian Jewish culture, history. Here is our 2 hour+ interview with her (entirely in Yiddish) from less than a year ago (recorded and posted in the Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA) thanks to the generosity of Remembering Litvaks Inc).
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Obituaries, Roza Bieliauskienė
Tagged Jews in Vilnius, Lithuania + Jews, Roza Bieliauskiene, Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania, Yiddish in Vilnius, ראָזאַ ביעליאַוסקיענע
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Wollongong, Australia is a Long Way from Kaunas, Lithuania: Discovering a Holocaust Collaborator Among Us
LITHUANIA | HISTORY | KAUNAS | MUSEUMS
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by Michael Samaras
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Michael Samaras at the Wollongong Art Gallery in Australia
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Wollongong, an Australian city located about 80 kilometres south of Sydney, is a long way from Lithuania’s Kaunas, which probably made it attractive to Bronius Sredersas. He arrived in 1950, having fled Lithuania ahead of the Red Army in 1944. For the next 25 years Sredersas, one of more than 100,000 displaced persons to settle in Australia, worked in Wollongong’s steelworks. He led an unobtrusive life and acquired an anglicised nickname, “Bob”. He never married and didn’t waste his money. Instead, he saved his pay, frequented auction houses and with a canny eye built a substantial art collection.
In 1976, Sredersas shocked the citizens of his adopted city by presenting his art collection to them. For an industrial city like Wollongong, which didn’t even have an art gallery, this gift was a sensation. It triggered the establishment of the Wollongong Art Gallery which has since grown into a major regional cultural institution.
Sredersas was widely celebrated in the media and an exhibition space within the new gallery was named in his honor. After his death in 1982, his memory was preserved with eminent persons giving lectures in his memory. The gallery erected a plaque and hosted the Sredersas Dinner as a fundraising social event.
In 2018, the gallery staged a major exhibition celebrating Sredersas. Titled “The Gift”, the exhibition included a recreation of his home, a display of the artworks, a video, and a symposium on his life and benefaction.
Publicity for the exhibition included mention that in Lithuania, Sredersas had been a policeman. While I was aware of Sredersas’ life as a steelworker in Australia, his prior career as a policeman was new to me. I knew though that the Nazis had relied on local collaborators, formed into police battalions, to carry out the Holocaust in Lithuania. I was appalled at the possibility that Wollongong, my home town, might be honoring a Holocaust perpetrator and decided to see if I could find out more.
Posted in Australia, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Michael Samaras, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Bronislaus Schroeders, Bronius Sredersas, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, International Refugee Organisation (IRA), Joe Melamed, Konrad Kwiet, Michael Samaras, Paul Daley (Guardian), SD (Sicherheitsdienst), Sydney Jewish Museum
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Rachel Kostanian’s Inspiring Life Story (and Message) Now on German Wikipedia
RACHEL KOSTANIAN | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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Vilnius Cinderella Comes to the Ball (belatedly, and in Berlin)
German Wikipedia’s new entry tells the tale of Lituhania’s Rachel (Rokhl, Rochel) Kostanian, who for decades led a one-woman campaign in Vilnius for truth about the Holocaust, standing up to some very powerful forces. She was a co-founder and long time director of The Green House in Vilnius. Photo: Rachel in Berlin with Thomas Pfanne, former German cultural attaché in Lithuania, after she was honored by the president of Germany. See Defending History’s Rachel Kostanian section.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian
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New York Jewish Museum: Latest to be Duped into “Legitimizing” Lithuanian Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism?
MUSEUMS | JEWISH EVENTS ABUSED TO MAKE “KOSHER” HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | POLITICS OF MEMORY | COLLABORATORS WHITEWASHED
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Is New York City’s Jewish Museum the Latest Western Jewish Institution to be Duped into “Legitimizing” Lithuanian Nationalists’ Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism?
See Michael Casper’s new exposé in Jewish Currents
Are “useful Jewish idiots” addicted to photo-ops, funding and junkets being duped into joining “Kaunas Capital of European Culture 2022” year? (without Kaunas removing a single public monument to Holocaust perps)
For background see Defending History’s coverage of the revisionists’ “Jewish cover-it-up investments” over more than a dozen years
Andrius Kulikauskas on the Greimas exhibit at Lithuania’s National Mažvydas Library (2017); on the Library’s setting up of the Adolfas Damušis Center glorifying a Nazi collaborator (2017)
Dovid Katz on the (ab)use of East European museums to “legitimize” Double Genocide and far-right Holocaust revisionism; Defending History’s Museums section
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United States, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Holocaust Revisionism, Michael Casper, New York Jewish Museum
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A Jewish Museum Without a Single Jewish Staff Member? (in a country with 3,000 Jewish citizens)
[UPDATE / original publication 1 Feb. 2022]
Opinion | Sheduva, Lithuania | Museums | Litvak Affairs
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2022 is “Can you imagine?” year…
Can you imagine a museum in South Africa dedicated to the history of Apartheid without a single African member of staff on site?
Can you imagine a museum in Mississippi on Confederate state slavery without a single African American member of staff on site?
Can you imagine a museum of Lithuanian shtetl history in Lithuania without a single Jewish member of staff on site?
Yes.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl", South Africa
Tagged Šeduva (Sheduva), Šeduva + Holocaust, Šeduva + Jewish, Šeduva Museum of Lost Shtetl
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The Holocaust in Šeduva, a Town in Northern Lithuania
ŠEDUVA | HISTORY | MUSEUMS | POLITICS OF MEMORY | SHTETL COMMEMORATIONS
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by Evaldas Balčiūnas
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Just like each and every other town in Lithuania, Šeduva (Sheduva) has as the most barbarous episode of it history the Lithuanian Holocaust. It is not easy to tell this story. There are many narratives that contradict each other, with many omitted or unclear episodes. The omissions can be partly explained by the current policy of historical memory in Lithuania, as well as by the authority of some organizations that thsemlves took active part in these horrible events. Narratives that are unfavorable to them are denied, downplayed, or classified as “information warfare” (in other words: “Russia”). I have previously written about the difficulty in asssessing assorted narratives here.
The summary version of of the Šeduva Jews’ massacre that I recounted includes these critical dates:
June 25, 1941: The Nazis occupy Šeduva.
July 22, 1941: Šeduva’s Jews are driven into the town’s ghetto established to incarcerate its Jewish citizens.
August 25t, 1941: The city’s 665 Jews are murdered in Liaudiškiai forest. But a few of the Jewish families of volunteers (veterans) of Lithuania’s War of Independence in 1918 are “allowed” to live, under the condition that they abandon their Jewishness and get baptized. The residents of Šeduva and its vicinity observe the public baptism at the church. A couple of weeks later those baptized are driven to Panevėžys and also shot dead, like all their unbaptized brethren who were not “saved by baptism” for having volunteered over two decades earlier to fight in the nation’s War of Independence. The only one who survived was Ms. S. Nolienė, who was hidden by the priest M. Karosas.
Posted in Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust in Seduva, Lithuania, Lost Shtetl Museum (Seduva, Šeduva
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Elena Rimdžiūtė: Video of Christian Witness to the Holocaust in Šeduva, in Northern Lithuania
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VILNIUS—The Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA), a Defending History affiliated project, providing hundreds of Yiddish language video interviews in the “Lithuanian lands” (today’s Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Ukraine and northeastern Poland), conducted from 1990 to 2020 has just released a Holocaust-history extract from a longer interview, conducted in May 2000 in Šeduva, northern Lithuania, with the town’s last Yiddish speaker, the Christian Lithuanian native of the town, the late Elena Rimdžiūtė. As is evident from the clip, the interviewer, Dovid Katz, was focused on Elena’s Yiddish folksongs, and the Holocaust arises, at first tangentially, when Elena speaks of her friends who are no more.
See DH’s Šeduva section
The clip on Youtube is accompanied by a draft English translation (in the “Description Box”). This remarkable woman’s honesty, integrity, and desire to Just Tell it Straight, makes for a striking contrast with the current Baltic academic establishment’s claptrap about Prague Declarations, equivalence of totalitarian regimes, tale of two Holocausts, and fairy tales about the “uprising against the Soviets” celebrated in Vilnius’s Genocide Museum (recently renamed), and promoted by the state-sponsored Genocide Center and numerous public shrines to local Holocaust murderers of 1941.
Here is Ms. Rimdžiūtė’s genuine Šeduva Yiddish rendition of the beloved song, where a girl explains that she wants neither new clothes from the tailor nor shoes from the shoemaker but expresses her sadness that all the other girls have boys (altered in the final stanza to ‘get married’). The clip is followed by a draft English translation concluding with a transcription of song in Šeduva Yiddish.
Posted in Documents, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged Elena Rimdziute, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust in Seduva (Shadeve) Lithuania, Lithuania, Lost Shtetl Museum (Seduva, Seduva Jewis
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Will Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas Remove Nazi-Collaborator Shrines as it Honors the Great Leonidas Donskis?
OPINION | DONSKIS SECTION | MUSEUMS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | KAUNAS: 2022 CAPITAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURE
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Click on the image for details of 21 Sept. conference in Kaunas on role of museums in remembering the past
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Vytautas Magnus University, once considered a beacon of tolerance and liberalism, suffered extensive (utterly self-inflicted) reputational damage back in 2009 when it inaugurated a lecture hall and bas-relief glorifying Juozas Ambrezevicius Brazaitis, “prime minister” in Lithuania’s Nazi puppet “provisional government” in 1941. During his brief period as Hitler’s chief puppet in the country, he signed documents confirming transfer of numerous Jewish fellow citizens of his native Kaunas to the nearby Seventh Fort for torture and murder, and later signed the Nazi-ordered documents ordering all remaining Jews of Kaunas into a ghetto, to become the infamous Kovno Ghetto. During his later American career, as a CIA asset and academic, he never once expressed regret over what had happened to the 30,000 Jewish residents of Kaunas.
Then, in 2012, when an international scandal broke out over the Lithuanian government’s decision to fly over and rebury with full honors the Nazi puppet prime minister’s remains, it was, alas a top historian and academic official at Vytautas Magnus who described the reburial as a grand act of Lithuania’s historic drama, while denouncing the Leonidas Donskis led effort to pull the university out of national ceremonies honoring the Nazi collaborator, in these terms: “This wasn’t the academic community but a decision of the VMU administration which became frightened that they were going to get hit over the head with a club by the Jews.” For context, see events of May 2012.
LEONIDAS DONSKIS SECTION IN DEFENDING HISTORY
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Ambrezevicius-Brazaitis, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Memory, Leonias Donskis, Vytautas Magnus University
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Malát (Molėtai) Museum, in Northeast Lithuania, Invites ‘All the World’ to 29th August Memorial Events
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All Welcome!
Sunday 29 August 2021
Eighty years ago to the day, 29 Aug. 1941, all the town’s Jewish residents were massacred in the Holocaust, mostly by local white-armbander (“LAF”) fascists in partnership with occupying Nazi forces
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Defending History has a Malát section, which has followed the events — and their meaning — over the last five years
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Malát (Molėtai), Museums, News & Views
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Malat (Moletai), Malát (Molėtai) Jewish history, shtetl commemorations, Tzvi Kritzer, Viktorija Kazlienė
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