OPINION | BALTIC HEROES | HUMAN RIGHTS | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė (1898-1981)
Opinion
Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė is Defending History’s 2018 Person of the Year
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Defending History's Person of the Year, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Persons of the Year, Politics of Memory
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Defending History Person of the Year, Evaldas Balciunas, Fiokle Kiure, Lithuania 100th anniversary 1918-2018, Lithuanian Holocaust rescuers, Lithuanian Righteous of the Nations, Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė, Pinchos Fridberg, Ruta Bloshtein, Vilna Jewisih Cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Take Note, Historians of Israeli Diplomacy: Betraying the Truth about the Holocaust is Not a Good Idea
OPINION | ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | HONORING COLLABORATORS | LEGACY OF JOE MELAMED | LEGACY OF DOV LEVIN | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND THE HOLOCAUST
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by Dovid Katz (Vilnius)
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VILNIUS—We had the painful responsibility last week to record the folly of the Israeli embassy in an East European country that would go out of its way to lend “Jewish legitimacy” to a lamentable decision of a national parliament to name the incoming year 2018 in honor of a man, who in addition to whatever acts of bravery as a resistance figure in the postwar Soviet period, was also a leader of an armed pro-Nazi militia in the early days of the Lithuanian Holocaust, in late June and early July of 1941. The primary achievement of these groups, many affiliated with the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) fascist “white-armbanders” was the unleashing of pillage, humiliation, harm and murder of their Jewish citizen neighbors. Make no mistake, the Soviets were fleeing, in June 1941, from Hitler’s invasion, the largest in human history, not from the local Jew-killers.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas, Amir Maimon (Lithuania), Israel-diaspora relations, Israeli Embassy in Vilnius, Israeli foreign policy + Holocaust, Joseph Melamed, Rachel Margolis, Yitzhak Arad
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Vilnius Authorities Dump 1000 Jewish Tombstone Fragments on the Wrong Cemetery
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CEMETERIES
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by Sid Leiman
with photographs and input by Julius Norwilla
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Not only the living turn to dust; the dead do so as well. So too the tombstones we erect in their memory. Some people merit having their tombstone stand for one generation; others merit having their tombstone stand for two generations. But in the end, it gradually sinks until it is swallowed up by the earth.
S. Y. Agnon, A City in Its Fullness
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Abba-Menachem Kremerman, who died at 15 in Vilna in 1939. He was buried at the Zaretsha (Užupis) Jewish cemetery. For years now, his gravestone, along with many others, lay in a heap at a garden center. And now, in 2017 it was among a batch dumped by Vilnius municipal authorities on the site of a different Jewish cemetery, the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės), now reconceived as real estate for a national convention center. What’s going on?
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sid (Shnayer) Leiman, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius
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21st Century Lowpoint for Israeli Diplomacy? Ambassador Poses with Photos of Holocaust Collaborator
OPINION | ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | HONORING COLLABORATORS | LEGACY OF JOE MELAMED | LEGACY OF DOV LEVIN | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND THE HOLOCAUST
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by Dovid Katz (Vilnius)
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PHOTO: DELFI.LT
VILNIUS—Israel may have crossed a red line today when it was flaunted on the major News portal Delfi.lt here, both in Lithuanian and in English, that Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon had found the time this week to stage a demonstrative PR-photographed visit to the chief campaigner for the parliament’s decision less than one month ago to name 2018 in honor of Adolfas Ramanauskas — his daughter in Vilnius, Auksutė Ramanauskaitė-Skokauskienė, who is a prime icon of the ultranationalist camp that often glorifies various collaborators and participants in the Holocaust on the grounds that they were also anti-Soviet activists. The PR move came just after a major political commentator asked what Lithuania is getting in return for its staunch political support for the Netanyahu government.
UPDATES TO THIS ARTICLE: WEEKLY OF VILNIUS COMMENTARY; AMBASSADOR’S BETRAYAL OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY A FIASCO AS LITHUANIA VOTES ANYWAY AGAINST U.S. DECISION TO MOVE ITS EMBASSY (PARTING WITH NEIGHBORING LATVIA)
One of the PR photos released shows the ambassador posing underneath adulatory photos of the 1941 pro-Nazi militiaman (from various other periods in his life). Of course Lithuania has a vast number of inspirational historical heroes, including many anti-Soviet heroes, who were not Holocaust collaborators, and state decisions to honor collaborators cause untold pain to survivors, their families, and the remnant Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. They all send a message that becomes part of the history-revision campaign to downgrade the Holocaust in the context of “Double Genocide” revisionism.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas, Amir Maimon (Lithuania), Antisemitism in Eastern Europe, Chen Ivri Apter, Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Memory, Israel + antisemitism, Israel + diaspora Jewry, Israel + Holocaust, Israeli Embassy in Vilnius, Israeli Foreign Policy + Eastern Europe, Israeli foreign policy + Holocaust, Joseph Melamed, Leivick House (Tel Aviv), Rachel Margolis, Ruta Vanagaite, Yitzhak Arad
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Lithuania’s Ambassador in Washington Tells Audience of Ruta Vanagaite’s “Russian Connection”
EVENTS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | BOOKS | PIRAMÓNT CEMETERY | LITHUANIA
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by Josh Cohen (Washington DC)
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As anyone who has been following events in Lithuania for the last several years surely knows by now, the country sports street names and monuments honoring locals who collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two. It was in this context that I attended an event in Washington, DC yesterday at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute discussing Ruta Vanagaite’s controversial book “Our People” (it appeared in Lithuanian in 2016) that blows open the door describing the true extent of Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust. Vanagaite and her co-author Efraim Zuroff , director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, spoke at the event.
Posted in Books, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Josh Cohen, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rūta Vanagaitė, United States
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Josh Cohen, Kennan Institute (Wilson Center), Lithuanian Embassy in Washington DC, Lithuuanian-Jewish relations, Piramont, Rolandas Krisciunas, Ruta Vanagaite, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vanagaite + Zuroff
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Sad Error of Naming 2018 for Someone who “Just” Led a Pro-Nazi “Partisan Squad” in Lithuania in June and July of 1941
OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY
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by Evaldas Balčiūnas
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The national scandal unleashed by the Lithuanian Rūta Vanagaitė and the Jewish Efraim Zuroff via their statements about Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, is gradually losing momentum. The Seimas (parliament) went right ahead and declared the incoming year, 2018, to be The Year of Ramanauskas-Vanagas. That is sad. Three years ago, I wrote about this person’s activities in Druskininkai in 1941. Society back then was silent about it. It was only the desire of some politicians to glorify this personage that led to the aforementioned Lithuanian and Jewish commentators to talk about him. They spoke loudly and an antisemitic bubble burst. Vanagaitė’s statement had some inaccuracies. The very statement was taken as an insult by the mainstream. Public details about Zuroff’s statement were scarce. My 2014 article was among those details.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, New Britain, Connecticut: Plans to Glorify Alleged Nazi Collaborator?, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas Vanagas, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Forest Brothers in Lithuania, Ruta Vanagaite
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The Extraordinary Recent History of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania
OPINION | HISTORY | LITHUANIA’S STATE COMMISSION ON NAZI AND SOVIET CRIMES | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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by Dovid Katz
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This paper was published today by Taylor and Francis on its website. It appears in Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, volume 31, no. 3, pp. 285-295 (Dec. 2017). Dapim is edited by the Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Research at the University of Haifa.
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In Lithuania, the primary provider for Holocaust studies for close to two decades has been the state-sponsored International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (ICECNSORL), which was established in 1998 by decree of the nation’s president and is housed in the office of its prime minister, embedding it in the highest strata of Lithuanian politics. Several of its activities have enabled significant contributions in research, education, and public commemoration.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, history of Holocaust studies, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Studies University of Haifa, Holocaust Survivors demonstrate againstAzubalis, International Commission on Evalluation of Crimes of Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes, Yitzhak Arad
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Old Jewish Gravestones Transported to Piramónt — to Divert Attention from Convention Center Travesty?
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CEMETERIES
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by Julius Norwilla
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Delfi.lt, the major Lithuanian news portal, yesterday published an article by its correspondent Rūta Pukenė about the latest “activities” on the site of the five-century old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt, which houses the ruin of the old Soviet Sports Palace, surrounded by thousands of still extant graves, amid controversial plans to construct a national convention center using the Soviet building as its core. Many friends of Vilnius have argued forcefully that the city’s interests lie in preserving and restoring Lithuania’s oldest Jewish cemetery, where many rabbinic luminaries still lie buried, and for the convention center project to be moved to another venue in town.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish cemetery in Snipiskes, Julius Norvila, Julius Norwilla, Martynas Užpelkis, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, Piramont Jewish cemetery
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Books in the Debate to Late 2017
[updated]
In the Debate to Late 2017
YEAR OF PUBLICATION VARIES.
See DH’s BOOKS SECTION
Andriukaitis (reviewed by Vasil)
Bankier [Kuniuchowsky Collection] (reviewed by Zuroff)
Berlin (notice of appearance in Defending History)
Bubnys (reviewed by Katz; by Vasil)
Cassedy (reviewed by Katz; by Nadler; by Zabludoff; by Zuroff)
Posted in Books, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Algimantas Liekis, Arunas Bubnys, Ellen Cassedy, Himka & Michlic, Karen Sutton, Laima Vince, Mink & Neumayer, Vytenis Andriukaitis
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New Section in Lithuanian on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės)
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—Defending History today inaugurated a new section, in the Lithuanian language, on the international efforts calling for restoration of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt and for the Jewish heritage of Vilna and Lithuania to not be defiled by a convention center surrounded by a half millennium of Litvak graves. The convention center project can easily be moved to another appropriate venue. The section aims to provide content stemming from various communities within Lithuania as well as translations of the international outcry over the convention center project.
Vilniaus senosios žydų (Piramonto) kapinės Šnipiškėse
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Herbert Block and Issues of Lithuanian Jewish Cemetery Preservation, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Jewish heritage in Lithuania, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery
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Rabinų deklaracija dėl senųjų Vilniaus Piramonto žydų kapinių (Šnipiškėse)
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CEMETERIES
Lietuvių kalba
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Neseniai, 5775 žydų kalendoriaus metų Avo mėnesį (2015 m. liepos 16-rugpjūčio 15), buvo hebrajiškai ir angliškai paskelbta rabinų deklaracija dėl senųjų žydų kapinių Vilniuje (tekstas buvo paskelbtas abiem kalbomis 2015 m. liepos 30 d. „Hamodia“ numeryje; liepos 29 d. „Hamodia“ tinklapyje ir liepos 30 d. defendinghistory.com buvo paskelbta apie šį dokumentą).
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilniaus senosios žydų (Piramonto) kapinės Šnipiškėse
Tagged P{iramontas, Vilniaus žydų kapinės, Zydai lietuvoje, žydų kapinės Šnipiškėse
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The World Celebrates Professor Greimas With No Regard for His Victims
OPINION | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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by Andrius Kulikauskas
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Renowned Lithuanian-French thinker Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917-1992) was more forthcoming than most about his dubious, or frankly, criminal behavior as a young man.
From his interviews we know that in 1940, he gave public speeches in support of Soviet annexation of Lithuania. And in 1941, he served as an editor for the newspaper Tėvynė in Šiauliai, which repeatedly called for ethnic cleansing of Jews from Lithuania.
Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Mažvydas National Library (Issues Arising), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Algirdas Julius Greimas, Andrius Kulikauskas, Einsatzgruppen, Jonas Noreika, LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), Naujosios Biržų žinios, S.D. (Sicherheitsdienst), Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters (LLKS), Vilnius Gedminas Technical University
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Defending History Calls on Ukraine’s President to Publicly Rebuke Senior Official for “Dog Whistle” Advocating Antisemitic Violence
OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF PERPETRATORS | UKRAINE
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In response to a protest from the World Jewish Congress, after the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa unveiled a statue celebrating nationalist leader Symon Petliura — whose troops killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms between 1918 and 1921 — a regional official from the extremist Svoboda party threatened Jewish citizens. In a Facebook rant, the Svoboda official warned Jews opposed to the Petliura statue to fall in line or face the consequences. The Svoboda official stated that “the only time we comfortably coexisted with kikes is Koliyvishchyna,” a reference to an 18th century pogrom against Jews in Ukraine.
Related: Ukraine’s Minister for Infrastructure Plans to Build Actual “Road to Bandera”
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Ukraine
Tagged antisemitism in Ukraine, Boghdan Chervak, Maxim Zalizniaks, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN, Petliura, Petro Poroshenko, Roman Shukhevych, Stepan Bandera, Ukraine, Vinnitsa
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Instead of Removing Honors for Holocaust Collaborators, New Petition is Launched to Ask for Yet Another
OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS
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by Evaldas Balčiūnas
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In a 2012 article in Defending History, I asked why Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika is made into a “national hero” here in Lithuania, one honored by street names and public plaques. Since then protests have come, among others, from a somewhat obscured petition by Lithuanian intellectuals, an appeal from journalist and Declaration of Independence signatory Rimvydas Valatka, Lithuania’s official Jewish community, Grant Gochin, a South African born author resident in the United States, and others. These appeals, all from 2015, were crowned by a rare protest by Jewish students at a Noreika shrine in central Vilnius (see Defending History’s guide for English readers to the links in the 2015 debate).
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Latvian Court Rules Against a Protester Who Turned Out Against the Annual Waffen SS March
FREE SPEECH | LATVIA | RIGA PRO-NAZI MARCHES | PRO-NAZI MARCHES
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by Aleksandr Kuzmin (Riga)
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On March 16, 2017, the annual march honoring Waffen SS Latvian Legion veterans took place in Riga as usual. A co-ruling political party had called the legionnaires “freedom fighters”[1], the Security Police had denounced opponents of the march as “so-called Anti-Fascists” and put them in the chapter “Manifestations of Russia’s compatriot policies in Latvia” of its annual report.[2] The counter-picket applied for by the Latvian Anti-Nazi Committee had been ordered to move farther from the march route. Again, a pretty usual development.
Posted in Aleksandr Kuzmin, Collaborators Glorified, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, Symbology
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Ukrainian City Naming Street in Honor of Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer
OPINION | UKRAINE | GLORIFICATION OF NAZI COLLABORATORS
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During the last two years a notable number of streets in Ukraine have been named after World War Two-era Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis and were involved in the Holocaust as well as the mass ethnic cleansing of Poles in Western Ukraine. Josh Cohen explained in a recent Reuters column that it is part of Ukraine’s post-Maidan Government attempt to create a new national memory for Ukraine:
In 2015, Ukraine passed a law honoring the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA). Since then, other streets have been named after the group and its leaders, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) is drafting a law to posthumously exonerate OUN-UPA members convicted of murdering Polish and Jewish civilians during and after the war.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ukraine
Tagged Dmitro Paliyiv, Josh Cohen, Kalush, OUN Ukraine, UPA Ukraine, Waffen SS Galizien
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Lithuania’s Prime Minister Bizarrely Claims that Conference Center on Old Jewish Cemetery will “Lift” Vilnius…
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CEMETERIES | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | MEDIA WATCH
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VILNIUS—In comments reported today by the Lithuanian press service ELTA, the nation’s prime minister, Saulius Skvernelis has announced and hailed the decision to proceed with a national convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery as one that “will lift the Lithuanian capital to a higher level of competitiveness in tourism.” He also notes that “the lack of a modern congress center in Vilnius is the main obstacle for the development of conference tourism in Lithuania,” not mentioning that there are numerous alternative sites for much more rapid and hassle-free construction of such a center.
Posted in CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Herbert Block and Issues of Lithuanian Jewish Cemetery Preservation, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged "American Zionist Movement", Benzion Shalom Eliezer Freshwater, CPJCE, Herbert Block + American Zionist Movement, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, Litvak Affairs, Piramont (Snipiskes), USCPAHA
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Linas Vildžiūnas’s Review of Rūta Vanagaitė’s ‘Mūsiškiai’ Now Available in English Translation
BOOKS | POLITICS OF MEMORY
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by Linas Vildžiūnas
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The following English translation, by Laurynas Vaičiūnas, of Linas Vildžiūnas’s review of Rūta Vanagaitė’s Mūsiškiai appeared today in New Eastern Europe (as PDF).
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A book review of Mūsiškiai (Ours). By: Rūta Vanagaitė. Publisher: Alma littera, Vilnius, 2016.
What makes Rūta Vanagaitė’s Ours (Mūsiškiai) very different from all other Lithuanian books on the Holocaust is that it was from the start written as a bestseller. Written by an experienced public relations professional as an appeal to the Lithuanian public, the book raises the painful issue of historical responsibility. The author does not refrain from giving a personal twist to the story (it would be impossible otherwise, as the Holocaust is an issue of individual position and individual responsibility). The author is piercingly direct and uses black comedy. She approaches the topic with composure and a sense of supremacy. These two features may irritate the reader. However, she is entitled to it as she aims to confront the reader, which she so eloquently achieves.
READ MORE. AS PDF.
Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, Linas Vildziunas, Musiskiai, Ruta Vanagaite
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New “Litvak” Postage Stamp is Disturbing for Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust Survivors, and Yiddish Lovers
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | IDENTITY THEFT OF LITVAK HERITAGE | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | SYMBOLOGY
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by Dovid Katz
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One does not have to be a theoretical champion of Free Enterprise vs. Government Intervention to take stock of this week’s incredible contrast between the two major products of this last week in September, the annual week of intensive Jewish commemoration activity in Lithuania, and particularly, in its fabled capital, Vilnius. By “products” we mean things of substantive physicality that will outlive by far the week’s posturing, speeches, and meetings with glittering public officials and national leaders.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?, When an East European Gov. Imposes a Far-Right Symbol Beloved of Neo-Nazis as 'Representative' of Nation's Annihilated Jewish Minority Culture, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, Litvak symbols
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