[LATEST UPDATE. PAGE PUBLISHED 18 DEC. 2013]
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Politics of Memory
Film, Video, Radio, Music
Posted in Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Michael Kretzmer's Documentary Film "J'Accuse!" on the Lithuanian Holocaust, Music, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Baltic Truth by A. Hramcovs & E.J. Levin, Dudu Fisher, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Film "J'Accuse", How the Holocaust Began, James Bulgin, Jonas Noreika, Lithuania film J'Accuse!, Michael Kretzmer J'Accuse!, Nazi monuments in Vilnius, Ruta Vanagaite, Silvia Foti, The Nazi's Granddaughter, Vilnius's 700th anniversary
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‘Respect Cemeteries’ Group That Prepared Current Seimas Exhibition Asks: What is Lithuania Choosing Today?
DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | COMMENT BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, SID LEIMAN, JULIUS NORWILLA, DOVID KATZ | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO “COMPROMISE’ MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Editor’s note: The following is an English translation of the statement posted at the 17 September 2026 opening of the Seimas exhibition “The Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės, Vilnius” in the Stained Glass Gallery of the Seimas, Lithuania’s Parliament. The exhibition, running from 17 to 24 September, is being presented under the auspices of Member of Parliament Emanuelis Zingeris. (whose own statement is online). The exhibition was prepared by Artūras Imbrasas together with the association Gerbkime kapines (“Respect Cemeteries”). The creative team also included the association’s chair, Rūta Bloštein, as well as Arkadij Kurliandčik, Andrius Kulikauskas and Edmundas Kulikauskas. The original Lithuanian statement posted at the exhibition is available online. It is thr third of the exhibitions’s eighteen panels posted on the Gerbkime kapines website.
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What Is Lithuania Choosing Today?
The Gerbkime kapines (“Respect the Cemeteries”) Association seeks to ensure that the Lithuanian state respects the Jewish faith and honors those buried here; fulfills the pledge of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to protect them; investigates and publicizes the historical facts; identifies the crimes committed by the Soviet regime; legally recognizes the entire original territory as a cemetery; safeguards its dignity and maintains it properly; allows the international Jewish community to restore the cemetery; and, in doing so, restores justice.
Posted in 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, Politics of Memory
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Arkadij Kurliandchik, Arturas Imbrasas, Edmundas Kulikauskas, Emanuelis Zingeris, Gerbkime kapines, Respect Cemeteries, Ruta Bloshtein
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Lithuania’s MP Emanuelis Zingeris Issues Major Statement on Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės District of Modern Vilnius
DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | COMMENT BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, SID LEIMAN, JULIUS NORWILLA, DOVID KATZ | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO “COMPROMISE’ MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Editor’s note: The following is an English translation of the 3rd of the 18 exhibits featured in the current Seimas exhibition “The Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės, Vilnius” in the Stained Glass Gallery of the Seimas, Lithuania’s Parliament (The original Lithuanian panel is online). The exhibition, running from 17 to 24 September, is being presented under the auspices of Member of Parliament Emanuelis Zingeris whose own statement appears here (Lithuanian original).The exhibition was prepared by Artūras Imbrasas together with the association Gerbkime kapines (“Respect Cemeteries”). The creative team also includesd the association’s chair, Rūta Bloštein, as well as Arkadij Kurliandčik, Andrius Kulikauskas and Edmundas Kulikauskas.
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Redressing the Crimes of Tsarist and Soviet Rule
85 Years Since the Beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania
Today, in the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, we open an exhibition of documents and images recalling a living, painful wound in Vilnius that has yet to heal. The exhibition is dedicated to the old Jewish cemetery in Šnipiškės, dating back to the Middle Ages — historic Piramónt. The fate of this place demands our ethical responsibility, political will, moral resolve and an ability to regard the history of all the peoples who built Lithuania and Vilnius as our own.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, History, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Arkadij Kurliandchik, E. Zingeris on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Edmundas Kulikauskas, Emanuelis Zingeris, Gerbkime kapines, Piramont Jewish cemetery, Ruta Bloshtein, Seimas considered fate of Shnipiskes Jewish cemetery, Shnipishok (Snipiskes
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A Veteran German Public Figure Speaks Out—and Suddenly Withdraws—Statement on the Last Jewish Partisan Remnant in Lithuania
Opinion | The Last Jewish Partisan Fort | History | Blaming the Victims | Germany
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Top: One of the collapsing bunkers at the Vilna Jewish Partisans’ fort in the forest just outside the new German Panzerbrigade 45 training grounds (photo: DefendingHistory.com). Bottom: Panzerbrigade forces just down the road (photos: Panzerbrigade 45).
Editor’s note: The text below is the final English version of a statement by a veteran German public figure. It was approved by the author, then withdrawn on the day scheduled for publication, May 11, 2026. In an accompanying email, the author explained that he had been persuaded to withdraw his statement by an eminent retired Lithuanian parliamentarian who “is ready to ask the Jewish authorities, in what condition the resistance bunker now is actually,” after which he would be “ready to convince the political leaders in Berlin, that the process of renovation could start very soon.”
Posted in Germany, Gert Weisskirchen, History, Jewish Fort in the Lithuanian Forest: A Last Remnant of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, German 45th Brigade in Lithuania, Gert Weisskirchen, Litauenbrigade, Lithuania's last Jewish partisan remnant, Rudninkai Jewish partisan fort
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US’s Ambassador Yehuda Kaploun, President’s Envoy on Antisemitism, Sends Powerful Letter to Lithuanian Gov. on Fate of Old Vilna Cemetery
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | COMMENT BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, SID LEIMAN, JULIUS NORWILLA, DOVID KATZ | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—The office of Ambassador Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. president’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, today released on X the 10 August letter sent to Lukas Alsys, Lithuania’s Minister of Culture, on the subject of the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont in Shnipishok, today the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius. The letter can be accessed as PDF. In the following embedding, please use the handles in the upper left-hand corner to turn pages. The embedded PDF is followed by a transcription of the letter’s text.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, United States, US State Department
Tagged Ambassador Yehuda Kaploun + Lithuania, Old Piramont Jewish Cemetery, Shnipishok (Snipiskes) Jewish cemetery, US State Department + Lithuania
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Panzerbrigade 45, Repeatedly Citing Cemetery Cleaning in its PR, Fails to Mention Even Once the Next-Door Sinking Jewish Partisan Fort
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | LATEST REPORTS ON THE FORT| 20-YEAR CAMPAIGN TO DEFAME THE VILNA JEWISH PARTISANS | HISTORY | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—In the present context, we are limiting this survey to the official German governmental and Bundeswehr public-relations apparatus active in connection with Panzerbrigade 45 in Lithuania. We are therefore not including serious journalistic treatments carried by institutions such as the Goethe-Institut, which is legally independent and has mixed public and self-generated funding, even where such treatments importantly discuss the Jewish partisan fort. Our concern here is narrower: what Germany’s own military and governmental communications machinery chooses to publicize about Panzerbrigade 45 and Jewish history in Lithuania, while not uttering a syllable about the Jewish partisan fort right near its own training ground. As detailed in earlier reports, the arrival of the Panzerbrigade’s massive military infrastructure has already badly damaged the fort’s accessibility and has been responsible for rapid deterioration.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Germany, History, Human Rights, Jewish Fort in the Lithuanian Forest: A Last Remnant of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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German Bundestag and Government Statements on the Rapidly Sinking Remnants of the Last Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | 20-YEAR CAMPAIGN TO DEFAME THE VILNA JEWISH PARTISANS | HISTORY | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Berlin speaks of respect for the last remnant of Jewish partisan resistance, and particularly the partisan fort where the Vilna Jewish Partisans, all escapees from the Vilna Ghetto, lived and fought the Nazis, most famously after the ghetto’s liquidation on 23 September 1943 and right up to the end of Nazi occupation in July 1944.
But the German army’s new Panzerbrigade 45 is the new factor causing the fort’s rapid deterioration. In spite of all the laudable German government statements and commitments set out below (with links to sources), the remnants of Lithuania’s last surviving Jewish partisan fort from the resistance to Nazi rule — in the historic Rudnitsk Forest, today Rūdninkai Forest — have been deteriorating rapidly since the arrival immediately nearby, in the same forest, of Germany’s new NATO-affiliated Panzerbrigade 45 (“Litauenbrigade”).
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Documents, EU, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, History, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Jewish Fort in the Lithuanian Forest: A Last Remnant of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Blaming the Victims: Documents from a 20 Year Campaign to Defame and Decommemorate the Jewish Partisan Resistance against the Nazis
LAST UPDATE
(originally published 21 Aug. 2010). See also (older, not updated) Responses page.
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2024 2025 2026
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The campaign of defamation by Lithuanian state prosecutors and allied elites (particularly in the Genocide Center and the antisemitic right-wing press) has resulted in a number of cherished Holocaust Survivors being smeared as “war criminals” without a single charge ever having been leveled against anybody. Launched in 2006, the campaign, abusing tools such as “pre-trial investigations” and leaks to the media, have sought to brand as “war criminals” the heroes of the war against Hitler. It grew in 2011 with the addition of equally perverse “libel charges,” launched with fanfare when Interpol (!) was sent to disturb in Tel Aviv the elected head of the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world. Then, in 2013, the state’s “red-brown commission” defamed one of Vilnius’s last survivors on equally perverse grounds, all the while putting on “Holocaust events” for naive Western audiences, usually funded by the (unknowing) Lithuanian taxpayer, in venues including London, New York, Toronto, and Vilnius.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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The Magic Wand for Making Holocaust Perpetrators into Heroes in Lithuania — While Jewish Resistance Heroes become ‘Enemies of The State’ …
LITHUANIA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | BLAMING VICTIMS | GLORIFYING PERPETRATORS | LAST REMNANT OF JEWISH PARTISAN RESISTANCE IN THE FORESTS OF LITHUANIA | HISTORY
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OPINION
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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- “Soviet rule has disappeared. The Jews are left behind as fair game.”
- Entry of July 7, 1941. From Surviving the Holocaust: Kovno Ghetto Diary, by Avraham Tory.
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In the late sixties while working in a small company in Brussels my Jewish boss who had been “geschmuggelt’’ out of the ghetto in Lvov (former Lemberg, now Lviv, Ukraine) in a truck, before it was liquidated in 1942, had repeatedly told me that after his escape he had repeatedly tried to join with partisan groups in the area, mostly Polish or Ukrainian. Had they known that he was Jewish, he would have been killed outright. His luck was that he could pass himself off as a Pole as he spoke the language well. He had been fifteen years old at the time. I remembered these words recently on the occasion of the scandal that has erupted these past months regarding the Jewish Partisan Fort in the Rūdninkai Forest (Yiddish; Rudnitsker vald) which is now in danger of being erased due to the presence in that zone of the new German NATO Panzer Brigade (Litauenbrigade).
EFFECTS OF THE LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT’S ‘MAGIC WAND’? Left: Public monument to Holocaust collaborator Juozas Krikštaponis (photo: Seimas). Right: One of the collapsing bunkers at Lithuania’s only relic of the Jewish anti-Nazi resistance that sits next door to Germany’s new Panzer brigade and may soon disappear (photo: DefendingHistory.com).
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Collaborators Glorified, Germany, Jewish Fort in the Lithuanian Forest: A Last Remnant of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet
Tagged Genocide Center Vilnius, Jewish partisan fort (Lithuania), Ministry of Culture (Lithuania), Roland Binet, Solveig Grothe, Timothy Snyder, Yitzhak Arad
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Barbarossa Plus One: The 85th Anniversary of June 23rd 1941 in Lithuania
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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by Dovid Katz
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In the opinion of every Lithuanian Holocaust survivor interviewed, the magnificent six-century record of tolerance and enlightened coexistence, including the years of the successful interwar Lithuanian Republic, were in a single day, June 23rd 1941, replaced by the eruption of barbaric mass murder that is all too well documented. It is “Barbarossa Plus One” (the major killing started one day after Hitler’s invasion was launched, in survivors correct memory: the Monday after the Sunday). The far right’s history department, sometimes rewriting history on an industrial scale with support from certain state agencies (most infamously, the “Genocide Center”), has attempted to “fix” this by ignoring the facts and claiming that this was actually the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) leading an “uprising” which drove out the Soviet army and restored independence.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Legacy of 23 June 1941, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged June 23rd 1941, LAF, Lithuanian Activist Front, Seimas conference on 85th anniversary of 23 June 1941
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The Holocaust: A Schizoid Legacy?
OPINION | POLITICS OF MEMORY | BELGIUM | LITHUANIA
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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In chapter five of his major book on the Holocaust in Lithuania published last year, Professor Saulius Sužiedėlis discusses theatrical productions that Jakob Gens had proposed to introduce into the Vilna Ghetto at the end of 1941. Here are some quotes: “Kruk reacted with disgust (…) Members of the Bund announced a boycott and leaflets were distributed stating “You don’t make theater in a graveyard”.
I do not share the opinion that theatre should not have been played in the ghettos. On the contrary, to me, the sometimes vivid cultural life in the ghettos under Nazi and collaborators’ rule, in all its hues and colors, had undoubtedly been a bonding link, a source of some kind of normalcy and hope for the persecuted Jews, and a necessary psychological rampart against fear, boredom, stress, anguish, that all inhabitants of these hells on earth had to go through during days, weeks, months, sometimes years, perpetually living in the mortal fear for one’s life perhaps extinguished from one moment to the next or after a lengthy walk to a killing pit, naked, alone, forlorn.
Posted in Belgium, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet
Tagged Dossin Kazerne, Holocaust in Belgium, Jewish partisan fort (Lithuania), Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, Roland Binet
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Respect Cemeteries Issues Brochure for Campaign to Inspire Seimas to Respect and Preserve the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—The Respect Cemeteries group (Gerbkime kapines), based here in the Lithuanian capital, today released its new brochure with members of the Seimas, the Lithuanian parliament, in mind. They will be voting this autumn on whether to (mis)invest substantial state assets in a national convention center or memorial complex in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės in modern Vilnius) or, as Respect Cemeteries (and the Defending History community) hope, discard both plans in favor of the ethical solution (supported by tens of thousands internationally who have signed petitions) — restoration of the major Jewish cemetery in the historic Lithuanian lands. Thousands still lie buried there.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
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New Brussels Monument (‘An Echo in Time’): A Ruse to Bring Double Genocide Holocaust Revisionism to the Gates of the European Parliament?
DOUBLE GENOCIDE | EU | PRAGUE PLATFORM | PRAGUE DECLARATION | THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—The Double Genocide movement’s long-held wish of major legitimization at or near the European Parliament in Brussels via a huge monument effectively equalizing Nazi and Soviet crimes has come a step closer. This journal’s opinion has been consistent for some eighteen years, since these issues were forced on to the European Parliament’s agenda by some eastern member states (normally, in democratic alliances of sovereign states, it is understood that freedom of speech and thought includes healthy debates on history within each state). Our take: 1. Brussels needs a major new monument to the victims of Communism and its brutality, including mass murder and horrendous crimes against humanity. 2. Brussels does not need a mix-and-match monument for victims of Nazism and Communism together which is a ruse of the red-equals-brown (Double Genocide) revisionism movement, emanating from the East European far right, and seeking to downgrade (and relativize) the Holocaust, criminalize those who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and glorify local killers in the east as freedom fighters (they were after all “anti-Communist”). The effects of “Double Genocide” pressure on various European museums has been manifest for years.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform"
Tagged An Echo in Time Brussels monument, Double Genocide, Red=Brown politics
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Document Discovered: Soviet Act of 22 Oct. 1940 Seizing (Stealing) the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Vilnius Jewish Community
DOCUMENTS | OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—A deeply ethical and conscientious Vilnius scholar, flabbergasted by the local “mainstream” media’s rehashing of the mantra (and sheer antisemitic nonsense) that “the Jews sold the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to the czar in 1830” decided to look in the archives. When he succeeded to find the document, issued by Stalin’s USSR on 22 October 1940 ordering the confiscation (i.e. theft) of the Jewish cemeteries under the aegis of the Vilnius Jewish Community, he just did the right thing and released it to the public domain. That Stalinist order came very soon after the summer 1940 forcible annexation of Lithuania and its two Baltic state neighbors, into the Soviet Union.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Vilnius
Tagged Piramont cemetery, Snipiskes (Shnipishok) cemetery, Soviet theft of Vilnius Jewish cemeteries, Sporto rumai, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Poster for the Macabre June 3rd Demo Planned by Ultranationalists at Vilnius’s Old Jewish Cemetery (Slated to become a National Conference Center)
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | USCPAHA (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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The poster for the June 3rd 2026 demonstration at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery calling for the building the Soviets plonked in its center to become the new national conference center
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VILNIUS—The poster in question invites people to a protest action on June 3 at the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports. Three prominent public figures and their quotes are depicted:
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish cemetery in Snipiskes, Jewish cemetery Piramont, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, plans for conference center in Jewish cemetery, Shnipishok Jewish cemetery
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Please Email Lithuania’s Seimas Committee on Culture to Defend Vilnius’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Andrius Kulikauskas
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Inset from photo below by E. Kulikauskas
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On March 18, 2026, twenty-three members of Lithuania’s parliament, Seimas, sponsored a bill to Promptly Renovate the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace. On April 21, twenty-five members, representing all of Lithuania’s political parties, with the support of President Gitanas Nausėda, sponsored a revised bill On the Further Utilization of the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace, cherishing it as a masterpiece of 20th century brutalist architecture which must be revived and exploited as a conference center and tourist site.
Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Andrius Kulikauskas on Vilnius's Oldest Jewish Cemetery, 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, Politics of Memory
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Piramont (Shnipishok, Seimas (Lithuanian parliament), Snipiskes cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery at Snipiskes
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Sadness and Shock, as Famed Opera Singer ‘Sings in Yiddish’ at Free Concert to Promote Vilnius ‘Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery’ Project
OPINION | YIDDISH INSTRUMENTALIZED FOR EAST EUROPEAN STATE PR | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | USCPAHA (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—There was sadness and shock in the international Litvak community this week as news spread that famed Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Judita Leitaitė, a professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, was featured in the program of the free 18 May 2026 concert arranged to promote the project to situate a new national convention center in a Soviet ruin that lies in the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery where many thousands still lie buried. The Soviets pillaged all the stones, but left untouched the graves that were not under the building of the “Sporto Rumai” building.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Music, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Instrumentalization of Yiddish, Jewish cemetery in Snipiskes (Shnipishok), Judita Leitaite, Leitaite + Holocaust commemoration, Leitaite + Jewish music
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