Opinion

Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF That in 1941 Butchered Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Posted on 19 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LEGACY OF 23 JUNE 1941 | 2011 ATTEMPTS TO SANITIZE THE LAF  |  LAF’S INTENTIONS IN WRITING | ŠKIRPA’S PLANS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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OPINION

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The esteemed Harvard and Univ. of Chicago educated American-Lithuanian professor and public affairs analyst, Kęstutis Girnius, tried a decade and a half ago to mobilize support for a far-right inspired dry-clean of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF, Lietuvių aktyvistų frontas) which was the 1941 organization that did not shoot a rabbit when the Soviets were in power (1940-1941) but began to murder thousands of innocent Jewish neighbors the moment the Soviet army started its panicked flight eastward, and there was no authority to stop them. Hitler’s local henchmen declared an “independence” that included the oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the commitment to rid Lithuania of all its Jews, and the unleashing of barbaric murder before the Germans even arrived or set up their control. Any true friend of Lithuania will understand that this is the kind of pro-fascist revisionism that beautiful, modern, tolerant, democratic Lithuania needs like a hole in the head.

Girnius’s public launch of a new initiative to fix the LAF was announced in an article in Delfi.lt this week in which, in one fell swoop, he works to undermine the magnificent contributions of so many great truth-telling Lithuanian ethicists of the past three decades, including Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Saulius Beržinis, Aleksandras Bosas, Valentinas Brandišauskas, Algirdas Brazauskas, Leonidas Donskis, Silvia Foti, Andrius Kulikauskas, Liudas Truska, Rūta Vanagaitė, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Tomas Venclova, Linas Vildžiūnas, and numerous others.

“On 11 March [2025], a group of Conservative Party members set up the June Uprising Collegium with the aim to ‘properly assess and legitimize the uprising as a significant historical event’ which had decisive influence on the subsequent struggle for Lithuanian independence.” — K. Girnius in Delfi.lt

Donskis answers from the grave with his essay aptly titled: ‘When will the truth finally set us free’? See also his other essays in Defending History.

Girnius’s new “revisionism launch” takes out of context quotes from two of them, Donskis and Venclova, in a lame effort to recruit them to this pathetic cause. But the tragically prematurely departed Leonidas Donskis (1962-2016) answers him today from the grave. It seems the original link to Donskis’s 2010 essay was taken down (but a version was published by Bernardinai in 2019). Back in 2010, the prescient and brilliant Lithuanian thinker asked Defending History to arrange and publish an English translation of his essay, which he personally edited and approved. Before that year was out, Leonidas asked us to arrange for translation and publication of an essay in the debate by philosopher Nida Vasiliauskaitė.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF That in 1941 Butchered Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Another Kind of Final Solution?

Posted on 14 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | MUSEUMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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by Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

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When speaking about the Holocaust in Lithuania, it is customary to cite 95%, that is, more than two hundred thousand people. This is not only the lives lost, but also schools, synagogues, kheyders, yeshivas, books, newspapers. This is the white tablecloth and fresh challah of Shabbos, these are the Sabbath conversations in the bes-medresh, which tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tinsmiths in the shtetls wait for all week long, for whom conversations about the Torah are a long-awaited spiritual respite. Today, in such a former synagogue you can see a carpentry workshop, a fire department, a gym, a bathhouse, a funeral services business, and at best a library… After all, there are no more Jews. In the town of Butrimonys (Yiddish: Butrimánts), the name of the former owner, Pertzikovich, has been preserved above the entrance to one house. We stopped to take a photo. A young woman with a little girl came out.

“Yes, Pertzikovich used to live here. And now we live here,” she said calmly and walked on.

We are witnessing the consignment of memory to oblivion. The language spoken, read and written by Jews in the towns and cities of Lithuania has been destroyed. The Nazi occupation exterminated 95% of Yiddish speakers, the bearers of a culture that had suddenly blossomed so brightly in the 1920s and 30s.

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Posted in Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another Kind of Final Solution?

Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

Posted on 12 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | YITZHAK ARAD | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Everybody makes mistakes, even august, storied and splendid international organizations. As in personal affairs, so in conference rooms, the secret is in the ability to say so and make a change, remembering the adage attributed to Mark Twain, along the lines of it being much easier to fool a person than to get them to admit they have been fooled.

The Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany) has just allowed its vaunted name and logo to appear on the publicity for events in Palanga and Plunge, Lithuania organized by one of the major engines of East European Holocaust revisionism. That entity is the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes,” which local diplomats have long dubbed for short “the Red-Brown Commission” starting in 2008 when the Commission reacted with utter silence to prosecutors’ launching of absurd and cruel kangaroo pretrial war crimes investigations into two of Vilnius’s most beloved Holocaust survivors, Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024). Please skim through the saga.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

Posted on 24 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION  |  WOMEN’S ISSUES | UKRAINE | LITHUANIA

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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

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The author’s recent mission to Ukraine ended with gifting to Ukraine’s defenders the car she drove from Vilnius.

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When discussing feminism in Lithuania, I like to talk about women “volunteers” in part because I am one of them. Volunteers are people who give of their time and wherewithal to actually deliver aid to Ukraine. Their activities are very dangerous, because they often go to hot spots. On December 31, 2024, one volunteer was seriously injured when a package left on the street of a front-line town exploded in his hand. In June 2024, another volunteer lost a leg after coming under fire in Pokrovsk. You might think that this activity would discourage women, but there are a lot of them among the volunteers. These are emancipated, courageous women who go to the most dangerous zones, helping to transport cars and necessary equipment to the front.

I also go on such missions, because I believe that it is the duty of a true anti-fascist to fight this evil with all my might. The Putin regime’s fascism must be defeated in Ukraine so that it does not come to our homes here in Lithuania.

When traveling to the front line, in the Donetsk region, you are greeted not only by checkpoints, but also by minefields that stretch along the road you are driving on. Signs everywhere warn of mines. You see the destroyed cities and everything that the ideology of the “Russian Federation world” brings. And you understand that you are doing what you must, that all the achievements of feminism are worth only to the extent that you can help in dealing with this modern-day incarnation of fascism.

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Posted in Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Ukraine, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Women's Rights | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism

Posted on 9 February 2025 by Defending History

 OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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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

Posted on 6 February 2025 by Defending History

FILM | ARTS | OPINION | SHEDUVA | SAULIUS BERŽINIS

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FILM REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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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

Antisemitism in Lithuania Soars with Rise of New Populist Party that Scored Major Electoral Success and is Now in Ruling Coalition

Posted on 3 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

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OPINION

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Societal antibodies against a sudden rise in national antisemitism seem to have taken a rather notable hit in Lithuania since the sudden, and some would say, meteoric rise, of populist politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis. Just over one year ago, his new populist party came into being with an overt antisemitic component best known from its leader’s remarks on social media that combine classic Baltic Holocaust-based antisemitism with anti-Israel based bias in a new synthesis of prejudice against our country’s tiny Jewish minority, now numbering less than three thousand souls. It is called the “Dawn of Nemunas Political Party”  (in Lithuanian: “Politinė partija “Nemuno Aušra” — PPNA), often shortened to “Dawn of Nemunas” or “Nemunas Dawn” (Lithuanian: Nemuno aušra — NA). It has become extremely popular and has not only entered parliament (the Seimas), but was been accepted in December, following elections in November, as coalition partner for the winning  Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) led by the current prime minister, Gintautas Paluckas. Some of the ins-and-outs have been sumarized in Defending History.

Banner of Žemaitaitis new (and successful) populist, antisemitic party in the recent parliamentary elections. The “Pillars of Gediminas” symbol in the center of the logo, while neutral in the context of various government functions, has come to assume a connotation of far-right extremism when employed by political groups and organizations.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Roma, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Antisemitism in Lithuania Soars with Rise of New Populist Party that Scored Major Electoral Success and is Now in Ruling Coalition

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

Posted on 2 February 2025 by Defending History

[last update]

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

See Note below

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Videos Online

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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

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

Posted on 16 January 2025 by Defending History

GENOCIDE CENTER & MUSEUM |  A. BUBNYS | NOREIKA WORSHIP | ŠKIRPA WORSHIP | MUSEUMS

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OPINION

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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

Posted on 8 January 2025 by Defending History

[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?

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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

‘Harvard Crimson’ Report on Zaritt Saga Fails to Mention Abuse of Harvard’s Name for Legitimizing the Campaigns of Academic Exclusion by ‘In Geveb’

Posted on 21 November 2024 by Defending History

IN GEVEB WATCH  |  OPINION  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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VILNIUS—Today’s comprehensive and much-researched article on Saul N. Zarrit’s tenure situation in the Harvard Crimson fails to make any mention of his alleged instrumentalization (or, in more common parlance, “use as Harvard hit man”) by a retired grandee of the field — himself a sibling of the previous long-time, and illustrious, Harvard professor of Yiddish — in the editing (and providing of apparent “Big H legitimacy”) of the online publication “In Geveb” which, it is alleged, pursues the retired grandee’s vendettas against Yiddish scholars who do not meet with his liking.

After years of silence, this journal began to track the disturbing pattern in the section In Geveb Watch. Beyond possible abuse for selective bashing of scholars, there have been questions about alleged distortion (failure to even mention existence of the “other side of the story”) of the late 20th century history of Yiddish Studies at Oxford University. In the spirit of constructive response, this journal has constructed an in-progress online library of full scan-ins (gratis) of both the academic and literary publishing output, in the Yiddish language, of the Oxford Program in Yiddish. Work is underway on a parallel page providing publications in English, starting with Origins of the Yiddish Language and Dialects of the Yiddish Language.

Posted in In Geveb Watch, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs, Yiddish at Oxford | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Harvard Crimson’ Report on Zaritt Saga Fails to Mention Abuse of Harvard’s Name for Legitimizing the Campaigns of Academic Exclusion by ‘In Geveb’

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

Posted on 8 November 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | RABBI BARON SECTION

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SEE UPDATES ON FRONT PAGE
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by Rabbi Elchonon Baron

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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

Posted on 24 September 2024 by Defending History

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

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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

Flanders and the Remembrance of the Victims of the German Wars of Aggression Against Belgium

Posted on 8 September 2024 by Defending History

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.

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Posted in Belgium, History, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Flanders and the Remembrance of the Victims of the German Wars of Aggression Against Belgium

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

Posted on 25 August 2024 by Defending History

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

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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

Posted on 18 August 2024 by Defending History

 

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.

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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

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

Posted on 31 July 2024 by Defending History

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.

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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’

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

Posted on 22 July 2024 by Defending History

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

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AJC’S Rabbi Andrew Baker sporting latest silver cross from a president of Lithuania

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’?

Posted on 17 July 2024 by Defending History

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

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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’?

Arkady Kurliandchik Critiques German Embassy’s Kukliansky Award

Posted on 12 July 2024 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIA’S JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | GERMANY

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by Arkady Kurliandchik (Vilnius)

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I am aware that it has long been a practice to award assorted leaders with assorted honors on assorted occasions. Perhaps there is some logic behind it. If you are the leader of something, well, then surely you must deserve recognition!

However, the recent award which was bestowed on the D-Day anniversary upon the head of the “Lithuanian Jewish Community” by the German Embassy here in Vilnius seems rather misplaced. As stated on the LJC website, the award was presented to Ms. Faina Kukliansky “for her tireless work commemorating Lithuanian Holocaust victims and long-term efforts to unite the LJC including enhancing the organization’s role on the national and international level.”

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Arkady Kurliandchik, Faina Kukliansky, Germany, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Arkady Kurliandchik Critiques German Embassy’s Kukliansky Award