Museums

June 2009 Correspondence with Yad Vashem



D O C U M E N T S

After more than three years’ wait for a substantive reply to the points raised in a letter to Yad Vashem, and in light of the past week’s shocking revalations about political legitimization by Yad Vashem of the Lithuanian government’s “red-brown commission” that is the engine of Prague Declaration and Double Genocide politics in Europe, DefendingHistory is releasing the full text of the letter of 28 June 2009, and the initial reply received the following day.

In the original the images, numbered 1-7, were included as email attachments. Here they are inserted in the text. [Note: the author’s eleven-year Vilnius University affiliation ended in 2010.]


—-Original Message—–

From: Dovid Katz [mailto:dovidkatz@vilniusuniversity.net]
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 1:17 PM
To: גביר יוסי
Cc: ‘Simon Wiesenthal Center-Israel Office’; ‘Dov Levin’; ‘Joseph Melamed’
Subject: from Dovid Katz (Vilnius University)

Greetings dear Yossi (at the moment from Tel Aviv),

Trust this finds you and all at Yad Vashem well and thriving. As you may recall, we corresponded for several months in Spring 2008. I had been (and frankly remain) disappointed that by continuing to allow Yad Vashem’s name to appear as a partner of the Lithuanian government sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” even as the falsification of history (replacement of the very notion of the Holocaust by a paradigm of two equal genocides) continues apace at the European Parliament. Parliamentarians are told: “Look, Yad Vashem is with us….” Of course Yad Vashem has no such intention, and we are in agreement that it’s important for Lithuanian teachers to be educated in Jerusalem but that should be facilitated through any of the various honest NGOs or educators, not the “Red-Brown Commission” whose major current project is passage of the “equal genocide” resolutions in the European Parliament. My two recent op-eds on the topic are in the Jewish Chronicle and Irish Times.

Continue reading

Posted in Documents, Double Genocide, Israel, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on June 2009 Correspondence with Yad Vashem

English Text of Joseph Melamed’s Letter to Yad Vashem


The following is a translation of the Hebrew letter from Tel Aviv attorney Joseph Melamed, head of the Association of Lithuanian Jews, to Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, in reaction to news reports reporting that Yad Vashem would rejoin the Vilnius-based red-brown commission. In addition, the Association issued a statement to the media today.


Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel
1 King David Boulevard
Tel Aviv 64953
Telephone +9723 696-4812
Fax +9723 695-4821
www.lithuanianjews.org.il
litjews@bezeqint.net

Tel Aviv, 3 September 2012

Hon. Avner Shalev
Chairman, Yad Vashem
The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority
P.O.B. 3477
Jerusalem 91034

 

Shalom, Avner,

The Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel was left in shock by the decision of Yad Vashem to renew its activities in the “International” Commission [for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania].

Continue reading

Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Comments Off on English Text of Joseph Melamed’s Letter to Yad Vashem

Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum Responds to Survivors’ Concerns about London Meetings Together with Genocide Center



by Kamilė Rupeikaitė

In response to an emailed letter from this journal expressing the concern of Holocaust survivors and others concerning forthcoming meetings or events in London on the Lithuanian Holocaust, to be held together with the antisemitic and Holocaust-obfuscating Genocide Center, Dr. Kamilė Rupeikaitė, deputy director at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, today issued the following statement, reproduced here in full:

 

Representatives of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum were invited to London by the Lithuanian Embassy at the beginning of the summer. The aim of our trip is to meet historians and Holocaust educators at the Imperial War Museum and to look for possible cooperation between the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum and similar British institutions in London. We knew in advance that the Genocide Center is also invited.

Obviously, we have no intention to discuss any common projects with the Genocide Center because of their attitude and policy toward the Holocaust which is, to say the least, not correct.

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum has signed the petition together with the Jewish Community against the celebration of the reburial of the Chief of the Provisional Government Ambrazevičius, as we did not support the policy of the Genocide Center to honor the Nazi collaborator. For the same reason we have also declined partnership with the Genocide Center in the project “Names of the Holocaust Victims” which was initiated and is being implemented by the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

We have officially informed the Lithuanian government, which partly sponsors the “Names” project, that we refuse to be partners with the Genocide Center.

Continue reading

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Kamilė Rupeikaitė, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views | Comments Off on Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum Responds to Survivors’ Concerns about London Meetings Together with Genocide Center

MP Denis MacShane Writes to the Director-General of the Imperial War Museum in London



 O P I N I O N

by Denis MacShane

The letter below was sent by then MP Denis MacShane to the director-general of the Imperial War Museum on 18 September 2012. It was released for publication in 2013, and now appears in its chronological (time of writing) slot in Defending History’s Denis MacShane section.

 

  • Ms Diane Lees
  • Director-General
  • Imperial War Museum
  • Lambeth Road
  • London SE1 6HZ

Dear Ms Lees:

I write to you as one of the MPs who takes a special interest in contemporary antisemitism. I chaired the All Party Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the problem, have written a well-received book “Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008/9), and lecture and write all over the world on the return of the racist ideology of antisemitism in the 21st century.

Thus as a life-long supporter of the Imperial War Museum, and one particularly proud that this magnificent British institution encompasses the excellent Holocaust Exhibition, I write to express some urgent concern that IWM might unwittingly be drawn into a plan by certain far-right or ultranationalist circles in the current Lithuanian government to abuse the good name and offices of IWM in an attempt to legitimise the profoundly problematic “Genocide Centre” in Lithuania, in a series of meetings scheduled for this month, apparently organised by the Lithuanian Embassy here in London.

Continue reading

Posted in Denis MacShane, Double Genocide, EU, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on MP Denis MacShane Writes to the Director-General of the Imperial War Museum in London

Dr. Per Anders Rudling’s Email to Colleagues of 3 October 2012 Concerning the Zabily Speaking Tour In North America


 


The following is the text of the email which Dr. Per Anders Rudling circulated to colleagues today on the subject of Ruslan Zabily’s planned North American lecture tour, including engagements at top universities and a meeting with the prime minister of Canada.


 
3 October 2012 16:03:03 CEST Dear Colleagues,
Posted in Bandera, Canada, Documents, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden | Tagged | Comments Off on Dr. Per Anders Rudling’s Email to Colleagues of 3 October 2012 Concerning the Zabily Speaking Tour In North America

Vylius-Vėlavičius: Patriot or Another “Tuskulėnai Peace Park” Holocaust Perpetrator?



O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

In my recent article about the war criminals buried at Tuskulėnai Memoral Park in Vilnius I provided a list of Nazi collaborators convicted by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on April 19, 1943, and May 24, 1944 of murdering civilians during the Holocaust. This does not mean, however, that those convicted under other laws are guiltless.

SEE ALSO:

Milan Chersonski on Tuskulėnai Park in Vilnius

According to criminal case materials and archival material examined by Lithuanian historians, there are rabid Nazi collaborators buried at Tuskulėnai Memoral Park. Despite the facts, today falsified, but very “patriotic,” biographies for these people are being crafted and disseminated, according to which they are portrayed as fearless warriors who battled for a free Lithuania.

I have written about one of them, Jonas Noreika, nicknamed General Vėtra, convicted under sections 1a and 2 of article 58 of the criminal code of the RSFSR, but who was recently decorated posthumously by Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus, so I won’t repeat that here.

Continue reading

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Genocide Center (Vilnius), History, Lithuania, Museums, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Vylius-Vėlavičius: Patriot or Another “Tuskulėnai Peace Park” Holocaust Perpetrator?

Ukrainian Ultranationalists Sponsor Lecture Tour Across North American Universities



O P I N I O N

by Per Anders Rudling

Last week, a Canada-wide lecture tour by Ruslan Zabily was announced. He is the former director of the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement and the current director of the Lonsky Street Prison National Memorial Museum (for short: the Lonsky Museum) in Lviv, Ukraine.

AT THE LONSKY MUSEUM: JEWISH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS PHOTOSHOPPED OUT. A woman has just recognized a loved one among the victims of the NKVD killings in 1941. In the background of the original photo one also sees groups of Jewish victims of the massacre which followed within days of the NKVD murders (Jews were forced to carry and rebury these victims). Thousands of Jews were killed as Soviet crimes were blamed on them and used to incite antisemitic violence and murder. In this photoshopped version on display at the Lonsky Museum, the nationalists’ Jewish civilian victims are literally covered by the circular insertions of Soviet crime statistics, implicitly ethniziced as Ukrainian suffering.

The original image, before photoshopping at the Lonsky…

The lecture tour includes some of the most prestigious universities in Canada — the universities of Alberta, Toronto, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa — as well as Harvard University’s Ukrainian Studies Institute in the United States. The lectures in Alberta and Toronto are facilitated by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies; the Peter Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine; the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies; the Harvard Institute of Ukrainian Studies and its Chair of Ukrainian Studies.

Continue reading

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bandera, Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Ukraine | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ukrainian Ultranationalists Sponsor Lecture Tour Across North American Universities

Canadian Prime Minister Manipulated into Praising Holocaust-Distorting Museum in Ukraine


In the course of remarks criticizing the current Ukrainian government for its human rights abuses, made in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper added words of praise for a visiting director of a Holocaust-distorting museum in Ukraine who was on a Canada lecture tour last week, and for the museum itself. The museum, in Lviv, Ukraine, glorifies and sanitizes some of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators. An account of the prime minister’s remarks appeared in a 19 October 2012 report in the Toronto Sun.

There is no suggestion that the Canadian prime minister agrees with the Ukrainian Holocaust revisionists, or would wish to compliment those glorifying the local perpetrators. Instead, the episode is seen as yet another instance of a well-oiled lobby being able to confuse, combine and confound issues in dealings with Western personalities and institutions that stand far from these issues.  Attempts to make heroes of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators, in the spirit of antisemitic East European (ultra)nationalism, have also been documented this year in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania.

Continue reading

Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Museums, News & Views, Ukraine | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Canadian Prime Minister Manipulated into Praising Holocaust-Distorting Museum in Ukraine

Ukrainian Holocaust-Revisionist Museum Seeks Legitimacy with Well-Oiled North American Tour; Dr. Rudling Protests


1: Ultranationalists sponsor a North American lecture tour for a Lviv-based museum director. Harvard University (18 Oct) and a meeting with Canada’s prime minister (19 Oct) included.
2: Lund University (Sweden) historian Dr. Per Anders Rudling protests.

Dr. Per Anders Rudling

3: Canadian organizations complain to the vice-chancellor in Sweden about Dr. Rudling.
4: Exclusive: Per Anders Rudling in DefendingHistory
5: Scholars issue open letter
Posted in Museums, Sweden, Ukraine | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Ukrainian Holocaust-Revisionist Museum Seeks Legitimacy with Well-Oiled North American Tour; Dr. Rudling Protests

Rachel Kostanian, Head of Vilnius’s ‘Green House’ and Champion of Holocaust Truth, Featured in New Documentary



Rachel Kostanian, the famed one-woman bastion holding off the state-sponsored hordes of ultranationalist Holocaust revisionism, continues to lead The Green House, as the Holocaust section of Lithuania’s state Jewish museum is known. It is a small wooden structure atop a hall hidden by a long driveway, invisible from the street, in contrast to the other sections of the Jewish museum. In contrast to all the others, The Green House’s exhibits and texts narrate the simple truth about June 1941 and the role of the “white armbander” Nazi militias in initiating the genocide of Lithuanian Jewry, as well as the later and massive collaboration with and participation in the killing throughout the genocide of Lithuanian Jewry. Like others who stand up, and especially those in prestigious academic or cultural positions in Lithuania, she is being subjected to extensive official harassment, degradation, demotion and a campaign of psychological warfare including defamation (see for example, Esther Goldberg Gilbert’s first and second articles in 2010).

It is against this backdrop that Ms. Kostanian’s prominent inclusion, at four separate points, in Professor Danny Ben-Moshe’s new documentary, Rewriting History, acquires special significance here in Vilnius.

The film is available online. Rachel Kostanian’s four appearances are at the following time c odes:

11:16 to 12:12
17:47 to 19:47
21:10 to 21:34
31:20 to 33:16


Posted in Arts, Film, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian | Tagged , | Comments Off on Rachel Kostanian, Head of Vilnius’s ‘Green House’ and Champion of Holocaust Truth, Featured in New Documentary

Red-Brown “Platform” Runs Another Double Genocide Conference — in Warsaw…



Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw (14-15 May 2013), Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”

 

Continue reading

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, EU, Events, History, Museums, Poland, Prague "Platform" | Comments Off on Red-Brown “Platform” Runs Another Double Genocide Conference — in Warsaw…

Would a Jewish Museum in Vilnius Graywash the Lithuanian Holocaust?



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz


A recent visit to Vilnius’s “Jewish Museum — Tolerance Center” has revealed a shocking panel purporting to convey the “facts” of June 23rd 1941, the darkest date in Lithuanian Jewish history. It is the date on which the Holocaust in Lithuania began. No need, incidentally, to take our word for it. Ask any Lithuanian Jew, of any generation, current abode or political persuasion: When did the Holocaust in your country start?

Continue reading

Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Would a Jewish Museum in Vilnius Graywash the Lithuanian Holocaust?

Yad Vashem and the “Two Genocides”



O P I N I O N

by Danny Ben-Moshe  (Melbourne)

This op-ed was first published in Jerusalem Report in August 2013.


I remember my first visit to Yad Vashem as a 16-year-old visitor to Jerusalem. It had a profound, and indeed formative, effect on me. I left there with a badge clipped to my lapel inscribed with the motto, zakhor, the Hebrew word for remember.

Yet for all its splendid work, Yad Vashem whose formal title is The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, I am sorry to say, is now dramatically failing both the martyrs and heroes of the country where the percentage of the Jewish community annihilated in the Holocaust was higher than anywhere else in Europe – Lithuania.

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Australia, Danny Ben-Moshe, Double Genocide, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yad Vashem and the “Two Genocides”

Never Have So Many Owed So Much to So Few: Reflections on an August 2013 Visit to Some Museums in Vilnius



O P I N I O N

by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud/Belgium)

 

I recently returned home to Belgium from a visit to Vilnius, Lithuania. As is my custom, I visited different museums where the memory of the victims of the Holocaust is kept alive. I went first to the Green House on Pamenkalnio St 12. Not easy to find for foreigners as there are few indications on the streets. I also went to the Center for Tolerance. Apart from my wife and me there was no one else in either museum at the time of our visits there (in the high tourist season in August).

Continue reading

Posted in Exotic Jewish Tourism, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet | Comments Off on Never Have So Many Owed So Much to So Few: Reflections on an August 2013 Visit to Some Museums in Vilnius

Old Blood Libel Plaque Still Displayed, Without Comment, at Bernardinai Church in Vilnius



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

 

WHERE THE BLOOD LIBEL STILL STANDS: Seventeenth century plaque commemorating a seven year old allegedly killed by 170 Jewish-inflicted wounds, on display at Bernardinai Church, Maironio Street 10 in Vilnius

Continue reading

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dovid Katz, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Human Rights, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Old Blood Libel Plaque Still Displayed, Without Comment, at Bernardinai Church in Vilnius

Inclusion and Occlusion



O P I N I O N

A REVIEW OF THE PRAGUE PLATFORM’S TRAVELLING EXHIBITION “TOTALITARIANISM IN EUROPE” PAID FOR BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION (CURRENTLY ON SHOW AT TUSKULĖNAI PARK IN VILNIUS, LITHUANIA)

by Geoff Vasil


 

At the edge of downtown Vilnius, along the river Neris where the buildings suddenly turn old and worn and bushes, trees and grass take on unmanicured forms, across the bridge whose entree is gated by the Danish and British embassies to Lithuania, there is a strange park nestled in between some very empty Soviet-looking and much older buildings.

Continue reading

Posted in Double Genocide, EU, Geoff Vasil, History, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform" | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Inclusion and Occlusion

Artists Knew, Allied Leaders Kept Silent



O P I N I O N

by Roland Binet  (Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium)

 

When I was in New York last year, I saw an extraordinary exhibition of paintings by Marc Chagall, “War, Exile and Love” at the Jewish Museum. The focus was on the works he produced during his years of exile in the United States. This exhibition, well attended, shed an interesting light on what the artist knew about the horrific events unfolding in Europe at the time of his sojourn in the United States.

Continue reading

Posted in Arts, History, Human Rights, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet, United Kingdom, United States | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Artists Knew, Allied Leaders Kept Silent

Exhibit Honoring Jewish World War II Veterans Disappears Into Vilnius Thin Air



O P I N I O N

Cover of the brochure distributed at the 2000 launch of the “permanent exhibit”

by Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—Three Vilnius-based members of the Defending History team visited the Pylimo Street section of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania this week, and asked to be shown the famous and widely admired exhibit honoring the Jewish veterans of the war against Hitler in Lithuania. The exhibit, titled Lithuania’s Jews in the Struggle Against Nazism, was opened in a spirit of unity, reconciliation and mutual respect, some fourteen years ago (PDF of the report in the Spring 2000 English edition of the Jewish community’s then quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania, which was edited by Milan Chersonski from 1999 until 2011; JPEG; reduced image below). Its primary creators are Joseph Levinson and Rachel Kostanian.

Continue reading

Posted in Arts, Dovid Katz, Exotic Jewish Tourism, History, Human Rights, Joseph Levinson, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rachel Kostanian | Comments Off on Exhibit Honoring Jewish World War II Veterans Disappears Into Vilnius Thin Air

Double Genocide MEPs Sneak Revisionism into Parliamentarium Museum


The Double Genocide supporting website “Reconciliation of European Histories” boasted today that its core group of right-wing MEPs from Eastern Europe has succeeded in its demand to insert red-brown revisionism in depictions of the World War II and Holocaust era in the prestigious Parliamentarium Museum in the EU capital Brussels.

Continue reading

Posted in Double Genocide, EU, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged | Comments Off on Double Genocide MEPs Sneak Revisionism into Parliamentarium Museum

The Politics of History



O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

Translated from the Lithuanian by Geoff Vasil. Final version approved by the author.

 

Much has been said about recent history policy in Lithuania. What this means, different speakers understand differently. It probably isn’t wise to dwell long on the concept. Let’s just say “history policy” is the interpretation of historical events provided by state institutions and officials.

SEE SECTION ON

FREE SPEECH

The truth is specific. I will give one example of how this appears in our and neighboring states and how that illuminates the history of our state.

Continue reading

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Latvia, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on The Politics of History