Politics of Memory
DH Correspondent Evaldas Balčiūnas in Vilnius Court This Tuesday 17 Nov. 2015
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prosecutors & Police 'Investigate' DH Author Evaldas Balčiūnas, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Vilnius Mayor Plays with Fire: Yiddish, Pilfered Jewish Gravestones, and an Olympics of “Barbarism”
O P I N I O N / C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T / P A P E R T R A I L
by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—This city’s dashing young new mayor, Remigijus Šimašius, elected last spring, has now added Yiddish to the previously bilingual (Lithuanian-English) signs, wrought of expensive metal in rounded-edged casement, in times of austerity for pensioners and others in town. These signs are being placed near Soviet-era edifices made of pilfered Jewish gravestones (matséyves) that are a blot on this charming East European capital. This is the latest model featured on the mayor’s office website:
Photo: Vilnius Municipality / Mayor’s Office.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius), Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, mayor of Vilnius, Piramont (Snipiskes), Remigius Simasius
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Lithuania’s State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” Whitewashes Yet Another Nazi Collaborator
[from the day’s front page]
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But many in Vilnius shocked as official Jewish Community website posts the statement with no comment (in English translation with “God’s honest truth” headline (PDF) following the initial Lithuanian report; But mishap could be editor’s error or work of local “mischief maker”. Simon Wiesenthal Center responds. Report in the Jerusalem Post. Jewish Community leadership then replied to critics.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
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Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski, Polish Documentary Film Maker and Judaica Specialist at Vilnius Rothschild Conference, Speaks Out on Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
CEMETERIES OPPOSITION PAPER TRAIL ROTHSCHILD DH SECTION EU ASPECTS
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VILNIUS—Polish scholar, author, film maker and Jewish heritage specialist Dr. Tomasz (Tomek) Wiśniewski is renowned as a world specialist on the culture and remnants of numerous erstwhile centers of East European Jewish life, most famously Białystok (in Poland, but in Jewish culture within the Litvak north of Jewish Eastern Europe). He was a delegate at last month’s Rothschild Foundation London (Hanadiv) conference on Jewish cemeteries, held here in Vilnius. Following the event, he issued a statement on his Facebook page concerning the fate of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, known as Piramónt, in today’s Šnipiškės district. A slightly revised version was translated from Polish by Julius Norwilla and the translation approved by the author. It reads as follows:
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Film, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues
Tagged Piramont, Rothschild Conference Jewish cemeteries, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Tomasz Wiszniewski, Tomek Wisniewski
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Faina Kukliansky, Chair of Lithuanian Jewish Community, Issues Sharp Response to Latest Genocide Center Whitewash of a Local Holocaust Perpetrator
VILNIUS—The website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania today posted a powerful response by chairperson Faina Kukliansky to the statement released earlier in the week by the national state-funded “Genocide Center.” That statement attempted to whitewash the infamous Holocaust perpetrator and Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika, and itself came as a response to a petition and series of articles last summer calling for removal of one of the public shrines to Noreika in the center of this city, the nation’s capital.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Faina Kukliansky, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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No Surprise: Lithuania’s State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” Whitewashes Yet Another Nazi Collaborator
But many in Vilnius shocked as official Jewish Community website posts the statement with no response or comment (in English translation as well as the original Lithuanian); But mishap could be editor’s error. Simon Wiesenthal Center responds. Report in the Jerusalem Post. Community’s leadership replies.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Wiesenthal Center “Shocked at Whitewash of Lithuanian Holocaust Perpetrator”
JERUSALEM—The Simon Wiesenthal Center today harshly criticized the website of the Lithuanian Jewish Community for what it termed a “brazen whitewash of the Holocaust crimes of one of the perpetrators of the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry.”
REPORT IN THE JERUSALEM POST
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Dr. Beata Nemcová, Slovakian Scholar at Vilnius Rothschild Conference, Speaks Out on Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
CEMETERIES OPPOSITION PAPER TRAIL ROTHSCHILD DH SECTION EU ASPECTS
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VILNIUS—Slovakian scholar, author and Jewish heritage specialist Dr. Beata Nemcová, a delegate at last week’s Rothschild Foundation London (Hanadiv) conference on Jewish cemeteries, has issued a statement calling on authorities here to move the state’s $25,000,000 convention center project away from the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, known as Piramónt, in today’s Šnipiškės district, to another location. The statement reads as follows (followed by a facsimile).
Posted in 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, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues
Tagged Beata Nemcova, Piramont, Rothschild Foundation conference on Jewish cemeteries, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Rothschild Conference on Jewish Cemeteries Issues Press Release
Triumphant Press Release on Conclusion of Rothschild’s Jewish Cemeteries Conference Whitewashes Lithuanian Gov. Plan to Desecrate Old Jewish Cemetery with $25,000,000 Convention Center
KAUNAS RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY ISSUES PROTEST
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, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues
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Statement of the Kaunas Jewish Religious Community Regarding the Old Piramónt Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės
KAUNAS—Moushe Beirakas (Moyshe Beirak), head of the Kaunas Jewish Religious Community, which administers the city’s historic Choral Synagogue, issued the following statement today. The original is in Lithuanian, and the translation was approved by the author. [Update: A version of the English text appears on the community’s Facebook page.]
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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Lithuanian Government Announces Construction of a $25,000,000 Convention Center in the Center of Vilna’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery
O P I N I O N / H I S T O R Y / P I R A M O N T / C E M E T E R I E S
by Sid Leiman
The following is a reprint, with Professor Leiman’s permission, of his essay originally published on 13 September 2015 (Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah 5776) in The Seforim Blog. He is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and Literature at Brooklyn College in the City University of New York. Russian versions have to date appeared twice, here and here.
Posted in 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), Politics of Memory, Sid (Shnayer) Leiman
Tagged Benzion Shalom Eliezer Freshwater, Faina Kukliansky, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Professor Sidney Leiman, Sid Leiman
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Vilnius Names Street for Beloved Lithuanian Rescuer Ona Šimaitė
E V E N T S / O P I N I O N
by Defending History Staff
VILNIUS—For many years it has been a source of deep pain to many Lithuanians, Jews and others that the capital (and cities and towns around the country) continue to have street names honoring Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators but none for the true heroes of the Lithuanian Holocaust — the Lithuanian rescuers, who risked their and their families’ lives to “just do the right thing” and rescue some person or persons of a minority marked for rapid murder on the basis of Jewish birth. In the Baltics, the rescuers had to have much more courage even than in many other countries, because they were regarded as enemies of nationalist patriotism, as then constructed, not only as defiers of the German occupying forces’ program of extermination. They were regarded here as “enemies of Lithuania” (or Latvia, or Estonia), and sympathizes of communism who could expect no mercy if found out either by the German authorities or the local Lithuanian forces.
In 2013, Defending History objected to the plan to name a street for Ona Šimaitė in the boondocks and pressed for her street to be right in the city center.
Posted in CPJCE (London), Events, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius
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Ponár (Paneriai) Memorial: No Rabbi, No Cantor, No Kaddish
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Ponár (Paneriai) Commemoration on Lithuania’s Annual Holocaust Day is Dejudaicized Even More in “Nationalist Takeover of Litvak Heritage”: No Rabbi, No Cantor, No Kaddish
But ethnic Lithuanian costume and song are featured at the mass grave of Vilna Jewry. Honor guard with bayoneted rifles was a questionable touch.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
Tagged Amir Maimon, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Israeli Embassy in Vilnius, Mickey Kantor, Paneriai, Ponar, Rachel Margolis, Vilna Ghetto
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Israel Faced Some Delicate Post-Holocaust Issues During Lithuanian PM’s September Visit
Efraim Zuroff asked in the Jerusalem Post that the Baltic state’s campaign to revise Holocaust history — and its plans to plonk a convention center in the middle of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery — be on the table; Zuroff’s post-visit article in i24
INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION TO “CONVENTION CENTER IN THE JEWISH CEMETERY”
PAPER TRAIL
ISRAEL PAGE
ISRAEL SECTION
7 SOLUTIONS
AFTER MEETING NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER BUTKEVICIUS GLOATED TO MEDIA THAT ISRAEL DOESN’T OBJECT TO THE “GRAVEYARD CONVENTION CENTER” DESPITE INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION; JTA REPORT; IN THE JERUSALEM POST
CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEWISH PARTISANS NOT EVEN MENTIONED? Does Israel betray its own citizens by not asking apologies for the World War II heroes Yitzhak Arad, (the late) Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed? Arad and Melamed are heroes of Israel’s 1948 war of independence. Will there now be a public apology on the prosecutors’ page that still defames him [as PDF] and from the “Human Rights Association”? Apologies to Israeli citizens Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed? The 2009 Leivick House (Tel Aviv) speech of the late Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter. What does Dr. Arad think?
BUT PM DECRIED “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” IN PUBLIC (JP REPORT). HE WILL HOPEFULLY FOLLOW UP AT HOME ON STREET NAMES AND PUBLIC HONORS FOR HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS [CURRENT DEBATE]; OVERDUE APOLOGIES TO JEWISH PARTISANS; RAPID REFORM OR ABOLITION OF GENOCIDE CENTER AND RED-BROWN COMMISSION — AND REPUDIATION OF THE PRAGUE DECLARATION. NEO-NAZI PARADES ON INDEPENDENCE DAYS?
RECENT MEDIA: Slate. The Forward. Jerusalem Post. JTA. Times of Israel.
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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations
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Public Shrines to a Holocaust Collaborator and a “Secret” Petition: A Summer’s Strange Media Circus
O P I N I O N / C O L L A B O R A T O R S G L O R I F I E D
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
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In the midst of this past summer’s heatwave here in Lithuania, Delfi.lt, one of the most popular news portals in the land, exploded with discussions on commemorations and memorials for Nazi collaborators in our country. Rimvydas Valatka, a columnist for the portal and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, started it all with his article of 26 July. The “current events background” was the recent removal of the controversial Soviet-era statues of soldiers on Vilnius’s Green Bridge. Valatka, a veteran of Lithuanian journalism with the rarefied street-cred of a Declaration of Independence signatory, appealed for removal of the memorial plaque for Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika (“Generolas Vėtra”) from a central Vilnius library building, and wrote about a petition for its removal signed by a group of intellectuals and public figures, and addressed to the mayor of Vilnius as well as to the director of the relevant library (Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences), where the plaque hangs prominently in the heart of Lithuania’s capital.
The stone honoring Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika tops the lot on the facade of the Genocide Museum on Gedimino Boulevard in the Lithuanian capital, a stone’s throw from the nation’s parliament. When are we going to stop glorifying those who helped annihilate Lithuanian Jewry during the Holocaust? When is this going to come down?
Posted in Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust collaborators Glorified, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika (Generolas Vetra)
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Summer 2015 Debate on Removing Vilnius Public Honors for Nazi Collaborators
Balčiūnas, Gochin, Kanovich, and Valatka: Asking for Vilnius to Take Down Plaques and Street Names that Honor Holocaust Collaborators
But petition to mayor from group of intellectuals stays “secret”
And some local media regards the discussion itself as “a Russian plot”…
SEE DEFENDING HISTORY PAGE AND SECTION ON HONORS FOR PERPETRATORS
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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A New Yorker’s Open Letter to the Vice President of the European Commission
THE PAPER TRAIL / THE OPPOSITION / DH SECTION / BACKGROUND
Mr. Berel Fried of New York City, an Orthodox Jewish scholar and businessman, has authorized this publication of his letter, sent earlier today to Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, regarding plans for a convention center at the old Piramónt (Šnipiškės) Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. He is a frequent visitor to Vilnius, where he is known for his exquisite Torah readings at the Choral Synagogue. The most recent public response from the European Commission is here.
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Hon. Frans Timmermans
First Vice President of the European Commission
Posted in Appeals to the European Commission on Piramónt, Berel Fried, CPJCE (London), 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 European Commission + Vilnius Jewish cemetery, Franks Timmermans + Vilnius, Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes
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Motke Chabad Weighs In on Vilnius Debate
C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T / L I T V A K H U M O R
by Motke Chabad
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Our community has asked me to help them find a new chief rabbi, and to formulate the primary requirements specific to Vilna, as only Motke can. No problem.
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OUTSTANDING EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
NEW ORTHODOX CHIEF RABBI OF VILNIUS AND LITHUANIA
MAJOR QUALIFICATION:
MUST BE A DEDICATED SUPPORTER OF A $25,000,000 CONVENTION CENTER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OLD JEWISH CEMETERY AND MUST PUT HIS SUPPORT IN WRITING UPON APPLICATION
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Motke Chabad, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Chief rabbi of Lithuania, Jewish cemetery Snipiskes (Piramont), Litvak humor, Motke Chabad
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Grant Arthur Gochin in the Jerusalem Post on Memorials for Holocaust Perpetrator J. Noreika in Central Vilnius
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Human Rights, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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