Opinion

A Masterclass in Orwellian Discourse: The Vilnius Cemetery Commission Minutes of 26 October 2023

Posted on 10 November 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | 2023 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE” LONDON GRAVE TRADERS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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by Dovid Katz

This week’s release of the official minutes, in Lithuanian and in English, of the 26 October 2023 meeting of the current international “Working Group” (list of members) established to advise on the future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Shnípishok district, today’s Šnipiškės) contain some passages, in the view of this journal, worthy of George Orwell. Here are some samples from the official English language text (the entirety of which appears below, and is available in PDF format). Each quote in bold text is followed by some commentary.

“The objective is to honour and commemorate the centuries-long history of Lithuanian Jews and the Šnipiškės cemetery.”

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Documents, Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A Masterclass in Orwellian Discourse: The Vilnius Cemetery Commission Minutes of 26 October 2023

Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Citing ‘Morally Despicable Plan to turn the Shnipishok Cemetery into a Museum’ Tells the World: ‘I will Not Remain Silent’

Posted on 3 November 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | 2023 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHABAD IN VILNIUS

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VILNIUS—In a 1 Nov. 2023 statement circulating widely among Lithuanian officials as well as local and international Jewish leaders, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, head of the Lithuanian-tradition Yeshiva Ahavas Torah Baranovich, based in Jerusalem, writing in the capacity of rabbinical emissary to Lithuania representing the Council of Torah Sages of the US and Canada, challenges the extended closure of Vilnius’s Choral Synagogue at 69 Pylimo Street as point of departure for his critique of some of the government’s Jewish policies (including its supply of tens of millions of euros in “restitution” to the alleged control of a tiny number of government-indebted individuals, one of them representing the American Jewish Committee or AJC). The new statement is a follow-up to his publicly released letter to the prime minister and speaker of the Seimas (parliament) of 24 Sept. 2023. Rabbi Baron’s late father was the legendary Litvak head-of-yeshiva Rabbi Aryeh Leib Baron.

The issue of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery is the focus of one passage in the just-released statement.

“[…] (like the morally despicable plan to turn the Shnipishok cemetery into a museum)? I will not remain silent, no matter how many groups and people the Lithuanian government manages to pay off and silence through their well-paid proxies.”

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Citing ‘Morally Despicable Plan to turn the Shnipishok Cemetery into a Museum’ Tells the World: ‘I will Not Remain Silent’

Ruta Bloshtein, Author of Successful Petition, Calls on Jewish Orthodox Members of ‘Cemetery Commission’ to Stand Up for Preservation and Restoration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 29 October 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | VILNIUS | CEMETERIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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Ruta Bloshtein

VILNIUS—Ruta Bloshtein, author of the Change.org petition that garnered over 50,000 signatures and played a major role in the internationally praised 2021 cancellation by Lithuania’s prime minister of the project to turn the Soviet-era “Sports Palace” (Sporto rumai) ruin into a national congress center, today released for publication her 25 October letter to the Jewish Orthodox members appointed — in an apparent effort to confer legitimacy — to the current “working group” (commission) established, many believe, to rubber stamp a  state (and Turto Bankas) project to renovate (rather than demolish) the Soviet eyesore that sits in the middle of the cemetery. Without even mentioning the view that hated Soviet ruin should be removed, official commission minutes include an array of future conference-center, museum, memorial and other public space aspirations, including business (and builders’) interests’ visuals, but not including a hint of the extant visuals in support of cemetery preservation and restoration.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Ruta Bloshtein, Author of Successful Petition, Calls on Jewish Orthodox Members of ‘Cemetery Commission’ to Stand Up for Preservation and Restoration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

A Different Kind of Holocaust Artist: Auschwitz Survivor David Olère’s Unedited and Unabastracted Realism

Posted on 17 October 2023 by Defending History

OPINION  |  ARTS  |  BOOKS  | HISTORY  |  POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)

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I want to share with our readers a remarkable book with reproductions of paintings and drawings by and about David Olère who had been a member of a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But after the war he felt his mission was to bear witness to the truth, including the horrendous scenes he had seen and himself been part of: Vergessen oder Vergeben – Bilder aus der Todeszone by Alexandre Oler and David Olère [= David Oler]; zu Klampen! (Verlag- Springe/Deutschland; originally published in French in 1998 by his son Alexandre Oler: Un genocide en heritage.

Despite the millions of Jews killed by bullets or who died of beatings, pogroms, hunger or ill treatment in Poland and in the Republics of the USSR, the iconic symbols of Nazi evil remain, for a large segment of the world population, the gas chambers and crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the five other extermination camps in Poland. Historians have stressed the fact that the Nazi killers and their helpers sometimes found those mass slaughters by bullets or asphyxiation inside trucks where monoxide of carbon had been injected to be too tedious and harsh to bear for the executioners. So, Nazi Germany switched to mass killings in gas chambers with Zyklon B and – concerned about leaving traces – devised the crematories. Searching for the roots of this industrialization process, Simon Wiesenthal had already come to that conclusion very early (as quoted by Guido Knopp in Die SS – Eine Warnung der Geschichte).

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Posted in Arts, Books, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A Different Kind of Holocaust Artist: Auschwitz Survivor David Olère’s Unedited and Unabastracted Realism

Are Members of the ‘International Working Group’ Being Tragically Misinformed on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

Posted on 16 October 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNIUS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Julius Norwilla (Vilnius)

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Like my fellow campaigners, over the years, in opposition to the project to plonk a national convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery (via refurbishment of a hated Soviet “Sports Palace” dump that should have long ago been demolished), I felt nothing but relief and the need to express congratulations back in the summer of 2021 when our prime minister wisely cancelled the project. Over two years later, there is again fear, among Jews, Lithuanians, and many around the world who respect the right of the dead to lie in peace (verily a part of Human Rights), even when they are members of a minority. When the buried belong to a nation’s ethnic majority, there are usual no serious efforts to situate conference centers surrounded by subterranean graves (even when the above-ground gravestones have long disappeared).

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Other Soviet structures in Vilnius: “landmark status” withdrawn & rapidly knocked down

Members of the latest (& current) international commission

Saga of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Human Rights, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Members of the ‘International Working Group’ Being Tragically Misinformed on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

Furore over the ‘Baron Memorandum’ to Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Speaker of Seimas

Posted on 5 October 2023 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE: 15 OCT.]

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | CHABAD IN VILNIUS

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First, the documents.

All these recent documents, circulated by now to hundreds (if not thousands) of recipients, whether by direct email blast or by multiple forwards of such blasts (by their own authors’ offices and supporters), are, needless to say, now in the public domain, and form part of an important record for the issues of today, and for the chronicles of history.

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Furore over the ‘Baron Memorandum’ to Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Speaker of Seimas

Will Working Group Have Courage to Just Say No to New Wave of Building & Profit from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery? And — a Tale of Two Green Buildings

Posted on 27 September 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER

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Is this what “Jewish cemetery restoration in Holocaust-stricken Europe” looks like? For details of the results here of new builds and refurbishments on Jewish cemeteries, click on the image. As the buildings on the cemetery were going up, there was a long parade of government (and builders’) assurances that the dignity of the cemetery would never be violated there. Photo by William Pahl for DefendingHistory.com

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by Dovid Katz

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On the 4th of May this year, Defending History published the official document issued by the Office of the Prime Minister of Lithuania announcing the members appointed to the latest commission (“Working Group”) on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the historic Shnípishok district, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius). In the accompanying Opinion piece, the DH community expressed the view that “Never before has a state commission been empaneled on such a ‘Water is wet’ question. Of course the capital’s last Soviet eyesore (and symbol of brutal foreign domination) should be demolished and the 500 year old Vilna Jewish Cemetery restored. […] The argument that it can’t be touched because its preservation status is sacred and immutable to the end of time is an insult to modern democratic Lithuania and all who hold her dear.”

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Working Group Have Courage to Just Say No to New Wave of Building & Profit from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery? And — a Tale of Two Green Buildings

Yad Vashem Director Dani Dayan, Speaking in Lithuanian Parliament, Boldly Raises the Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators Noreika, Škirpa and Krikštaponis

Posted on 21 September 2023 by Defending History

[UPDATES TO 3 OCT. 2023]

OPINION | IT PAYS TO DEFEND HISTORY | YAD VASHEM AND LITHUANIA | ISRAEL SECTION | ISRAEL DEBATE CHRONICLE

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by Dovid Katz

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The modest but resolute Defending History community, in Vilnius and internationally, in unanimity today expressed heartfelt congratulations to Yad Vashem director Dani Dayan who broke dramatically, and publicly, with decades of what the last Lithuanian Holocaust survivors considered to be tragic betrayal and appeasement, often under presumed political pressure (see our report from earlier this week and Defending History’s section “Yad Vashem and Lithuania“).

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan (photo courtesy Yad Vashem)

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Posted in Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Israel, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yad Vashem Director Dani Dayan, Speaking in Lithuanian Parliament, Boldly Raises the Glorification of Holocaust Collaborators Noreika, Škirpa and Krikštaponis

Painfully, Yad Vashem Heads for Vilnius Event, Again ‘Legitimizing’ the ‘Red-Brown Commission’, an Engine of Holocaust Revisionism

Posted on 18 September 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION (SECTION) | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | LITHUANIA | YAD VASHEM & LITHUANIA  | ISRAEL ISSUES (SECTION)

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Prof. Dina Porat of Yad Vashem will chair the Vilnius event on the Vilna Ghetto this Wednesday 20 Sept. featuring (among others) Ronaldas Račinskas and other officials of the state-funded “Red-Brown Commission” — one of Europe’s major engines of Double Genocide revisionism and the Prague Declaration.

VILNIUS—As long as Lithuanian Holocaust survivors were alive, they protested with their last breath against the motives and agenda of the Lithuanian government financed Red-Brown Commission (officially known, à la Orwell, as the “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes of Lithuania” or ICECNSORL). Readers can visit a page documenting these protests from 1998 onward, reports of the painful episodes and sagas over the decades, and perhaps most painfully, the heartfelt begging by the last survivors, asking Yad Vashem to resist Foreign Ministry pressure and have nothing to do with the commission. Perhaps the best known document is the September 2012 letter to Yad Vashem by the late Joseph Melamed, legendary chairperson of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, the world’s leading and last organization of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors.

UPDATE OF 22 SEPT 2023:

See now Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan’s dramatic and historic speech at the Lithuanian Parliament that turns a new leaf in the pained Lithuanian chapter

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Mažvydas National Library (Issues Arising), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Painfully, Yad Vashem Heads for Vilnius Event, Again ‘Legitimizing’ the ‘Red-Brown Commission’, an Engine of Holocaust Revisionism

Wrong Choice for the New “Flemish Canon” in Flanders Region of Belgium

Posted on 6 August 2023 by Defending History

OPINION  |  HISTORY  | BELGIUM  |  EU

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by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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A few weeks ago my wife and I visited a number of British Commonwealth military cemeteries from World War I in Belgium’s Ypres area, which is in western Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region in the north of Belgium. Starting in October 1914, Ypres had been attacked by considerable German forces but held its ground and remained part of the Allies’ front line until November 1917 when the line was joined by Anzac and Canadian soldiers, going on to reach Passendale, thus breaching the German army’s hold on the Ypres Salient in the west of Belgium.

I always feel a deep admiration for all those young men, the young privates as well as their officers who were sometimes much older. I come to see there graves in these Commonwealth military cemeteries. They were young men who came from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland, England, and Scotland. They also came from India and Nepal and fought here in Belgium as volunteers, career soldiers or conscripted troops, to defend “brave little Belgium.” In Western Flanders, there are hundreds of such cemeteries where courageous men were laid to rest in what has been poetically termed “Flanders’ Fields,” a place that is forever British, with places of worship and by way of a common memory.

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Would Your Heritage Tour Group Coming to Vilnius Like to See an Informal Draft of the ‘Banned’ Film on the Holocaust in Sheduva?

Posted on 12 June 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | FILM | FREE SPEECH | BOLD CITIZENS | SAULIUS BERŽINIS | SHEDUVA | IT PAYS TO DEFEND HISTORY

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VILNIUS—The Defending History community here in Vilnius was proud today again to be a partner, with the non-profit Kopa Studio II and visiting cultural and academic groups, in helping organize informal, free, non-commercial, viewings of the film Petrified Time, which contains the “Satanic Verses of Sheduva” — the historically invaluable eyewitness testimony by the last witnesses to the Lithuanian Holocaust (themselves, now, a few years later, gone too). Filmed by award winning Lithuanian documentary film maker Saulius Beržinis the film is tied up in litigation launched by the “Museum of the Lost Shtetl” in Sheduva, and spearheaded by the museum’s executive director in Brussels, in a lawsuit conducted by a top Vilnius law firm, and ultimately paid for by a South African origin billionaire in Switzlerland. News and updates of the saga here.

What is success when defending history?

Defending History thinks it’s a major success when dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people are gradually being able to watch a film that very rich and powerful forces are effectively (not “officially”) seeking to ban. If your heritage, roots or Jewish-interest tour group is coming to Vilnius in the coming months and might be interested in a private, informal viewing of a draft first version only of a remarkable film effectively banned at present, please be in touch with Defending History (info@defendinghistory.com). To inquire about future online “viewing windows” please be in touch with Kopa Studio II (berkopa@hotmail.com).

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Film, Free Speech & Democracy, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Would Your Heritage Tour Group Coming to Vilnius Like to See an Informal Draft of the ‘Banned’ Film on the Holocaust in Sheduva?

New Public Model of 19th Century Vilna Features Czar’s Military Base, Omits Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 6 June 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNIUS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Julius Norwilla (Vilnius)

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Model of 19th century Vilna: Russian citadel — there. Old Jewish cemetery — not there. Just empty moonscape.

VILNIUS—Last month, the major Baltic news service BNS reported that a dynamic new outdoor exhibition, called “Pavilion: Vilnius 200 Years Ago” would open at the National Museum of Lithuania. Indeed, a handsome new webpage on the museum’s website gives more detail.

A model (“maquette”) of the city two hundred years ago is now to be enjoyed at the foot of Gediminas’s Hill, in the square right in front of the museum. The scale model is based on Imperial Russia’s 1830s plans for the development of the city after the suppression of the 1830 uprising, known as the November Uprising.

But instead of the half-millennium old Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery (at Piramónt, in the district right across the river called Šnipiškės, Yiddish Shnípeshok), on the right bank of the Neris River (the Viliya), in front of Gediminas’s castle mount, there is a disproportionately large citadel. The huge cemetery and its numerous mini-housletsare not marked at all. The citadel of the imperial Russian army is the largest and perhaps the most prominent object in the entire layout.

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on New Public Model of 19th Century Vilna Features Czar’s Military Base, Omits Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Time for France’s Embassy in Vilnius to Just Say ‘Non!’ to French Bookstore that Features Books Glorifying Lithuanian Holocaust Collaborators

Posted on 25 May 2023 by Defending History

[UPDATED 29 MAY]

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | FRANCE  | THE ‘FRENCH BOOKSTORE’ IN VILNIUS

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by Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—The French bookstore located in the building housing the Institut français / French Cultural Center, all part of the French Embassy compound here in Lithuania’s capital, has for many years been featuring smack in the middle of its prominent show window at Didžioji St. No. 1 in Vilnius Old Town, in the row of books closest to the viewer outside, books in English or Lithuanian (nothing to do with France or French) that are dedicated to glorifying Holocaust collaborators who supported and enabled the genocide of 96.4% of Lithuanian Jewry.

Jump to author’s memoir

Whenever, over the years, this issue has been brought up to French Embassy diplomats, French Institute leadership, the answer has been the same, along the lines of “It is not our bookshop, it is a private French-themed bookshop that simply rents the space from us. We are not responsible. The French Embassy is not responsible, the French Institute is not responsible, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs is not responsible.” Nevertheless, we would like to pay tribute to French diplomats who did make an effort over the years. On 7 May 2020, for example, the then ambassador, HE Claire Lignières-Counathe took action. She reported back: “The French book shop on Didžioji gatvė is not part of the French Institute. But we pointed out to the owner that to present this book in the shop window could hurt people. He agreed and removed the book from the shop window.”

One week later, the book was back. And that goes to the heart of how a far-right, Holocaust-revisionist, Hitler collaborator glorifying (hence ipso facto antisemitic) enterprise has been, as one midlevel French diplomat put it to us off the record, “making a monkey out of our embassy in the third decade of the twenty-first century.”

In the city’s everyday life, and all the more so for thousands of tourists from around the world, the details of ownership are unknown and of little interest. It is the universal public perception that comes into play when a French themed bookshop is housed in the building of the French Embassy compound in Vilnius, just to the right of the French Institute’s handsome blue sign.

Visitors to town can be forgiven for thinking the French bookshop is affiliated with the Institut français (blue sign at left). Photo: Defending History.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, France, French bookstore housed in Institut français & French Embassy compound in Vilnius, likes to feature (English) titles glorifying local Holocaust collaborators. What gives?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Time for France’s Embassy in Vilnius to Just Say ‘Non!’ to French Bookstore that Features Books Glorifying Lithuanian Holocaust Collaborators

Israel Chronicle

Posted on 15 May 2023 by Defending History

[most recent update]

Israeli Foreign Policy and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe (1990 — 2023)

JUMP TO LATEST

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel Chronicle

Could the Israeli Foreign Ministry be More Sensitive to Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture in Eastern Europe? Latest from Vilnius

Posted on 14 May 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | LITVAK ISSUES | ISRAEL CHRONICLE | ISRAEL SECTION

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by Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—The lovely idea to name a square in modern Vilnius for the State of Israel is a fine gesture of friendship between the two countries and their foreign ministries. Today’s LRT report informs readers that Israel Square will adorn the neighborhood known as Naujamiestis (the New Town, or the New City).

There is a problem.

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Posted in Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Could the Israeli Foreign Ministry be More Sensitive to Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture in Eastern Europe? Latest from Vilnius

Please Email Lithuania’s Prime Minister to Do Away with the Soviet Building Desecrating Vilnius’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 26 April 2023 by Defending History

OPINION  | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES  |  CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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In 2020, Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė struck funding and thereby ended plans to convert the Vilnius Sports and Concert Palace into a congress center. The Soviets had desecrated the heart of Vilnius’s oldest Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės) by constructing and utilizing this building there. 53,000 people signed Ruta Bloshtein’s petition asking Lithuania’s leaders not to desecrate it further. Many people from around the world wrote letters which convinced the Prime Minister to strike funding.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Andrius Kulikauskas, Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Please Email Lithuania’s Prime Minister to Do Away with the Soviet Building Desecrating Vilnius’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

But Who Will Now Tend to the Fate of the Vilnius Sports Palace?

Posted on 24 April 2023 by Defending History

 

OPINION  | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES  |  CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT  |  OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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What is there now and what could be restored: Clockwise from top left: The Soviet eyesore today; three details from paintings by Alfred Holler (1888–1954) at the current exhibit ‘Outsiders Look at Vilnius’ at the National Art Gallery in Vilnius. Photos: Andrius Kulikauskas.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Andrius Kulikauskas, Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on But Who Will Now Tend to the Fate of the Vilnius Sports Palace?

Blaming Inna Hecker Grade for Bashevis Singer’s Greater Success in English

Posted on 5 April 2023 by Defending History

OPINION  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS  |  MEDIA WATCH

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NOTE: As someone fortunate enough to have had some NYT letters published over the decades, I fully anticipated the non-publication of this one (9 March), and hope none will take amiss my publication of it here in the interests of putting out there a (not yet offered?) second opinion on a woman against whom I feel there has been some unwarranted invective. —DK

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Re “In the Papers of Yiddish Novelist Chaim Grade, Clues to His Lesser Fame” by Joseph Berger (March 6)

To the Editor:

The magnificent Yiddish author Chaim Grade well equals Isaac Bashevis Singer in talent and output, but it is wrong to blame his wife (or their marriage) for the failure of his work to attain equal status in English translation.

Grade’s profound preservation of the intricacies of pre-Holocaust East European Jewish civilization (with vast religious minutiae delightful to folks in the tribe) is just not in the genre of Singer’s stark, universalist, compelling plots that are moreover enriched by untrammelled sexuality and bespoke kabbalah.

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Posted in Arts, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Blaming Inna Hecker Grade for Bashevis Singer’s Greater Success in English

Latvia is a Democracy: So Why Fear Critique of Annual Riga Worship of Hitler’s Waffen SS?

Posted on 16 March 2023 by Defending History

OPINION  |  LATVIA  |  RIGA MARCHES  |  ROLAND BINET’S DECADES OF PEACEFUL AND MUSICAL PROTEST  |   VILNIUS MARCHES  |  KAUNAS MARCHES  |  PRO-NAZI MARCHES IN EASTERN EUROPE  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  ANTISEMITISM

 

VILNIUS—In the opinion of all in the Defending History community, modern Latvia is a free, democratic, peaceful, tolerant and delightful country that has in little over three decades successfully managed a dramatic transition to the conceptual and spiritual heart of the European Union and the NATO alliance of democratic nations. What a day-and-night contrast with the trajectory of its huge eastern neighbor Russia over these same decades: from the high hopes of the heady Yeltsin years in the 1990s to today’s dictatorial, criminal Russian Federation, led by our century’s most deranged dictator, that has been imprisoning and killing so many of its own people in addition, now, to the mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians in the course of the ongoing barbaric invasion of neighboring, peaceful and democratic Ukraine (Defending History’s statement in support of a rapid and complete Ukrainian victory).

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Human Rights, Latvia, Media Watch, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Latvia is a Democracy: So Why Fear Critique of Annual Riga Worship of Hitler’s Waffen SS?

Swastikas and Holocaust-Era Fascist Flags on View in Far Right’s Central Vilnius March

Posted on 11 March 2023 by Defending History

VILNIUS MARCHES | 700 YEARS VILNIUS CELEBRATIONS | FAR-RIGHT MARCHES | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

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by Julius Norwilla

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Eyewitness Report

VILNIUS—In Lithuania, March 11 is the national holiday to celebrate the declaration of the restoration of national independence in 1990. The national celebrations include a huge and admirably inclusive march of several thousand people in the central street of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. (This is distinct from the February 18 national  independence holiday which commemorates the rise of the interwar Lithuanian republic in 1918.)

Sadly, however, for the ethnocentric, ultranationalist mindset, this delightful event is not good enough. They insist on their own “patriotic” version, and they apply each year for their “traditional march of ethnic youth” to march later in the afternoon. Sadly, since 2008 (each year covered on site by Defending History), the city authorities have readily gifted them the beautiful central boulevard, Gedimino Prospect. Perhaps this year it is particularly sad, because all the peoples of Vilnius who live today in delightful harmony in the city are together celebrating its 700th birthday. Seven hundred years ago, in 1323, the city was founded by Grand Duke Gediminas (Gedymin), who famously remained a tolerant multitheist, and readily welcomed Jews and many others to his brand new city that came to be known around the world as Vilna.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Events, Human Rights, Julius Norwilla, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Swastikas in Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Swastikas and Holocaust-Era Fascist Flags on View in Far Right’s Central Vilnius March