Lithuania
Protected: New Documentary on Holocaust Perpetrator Glorification in Eastern Europe: ‘No Secret Monuments’
Posted in Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet
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Issues of the Day (Spring 2026)
Welcome! Please come and visit DefendingHistory.com. Recent reports here. Or, review our 18 year history history by scrolling to the end of our dated posts and work your way up. Our current cultural projects are listed below.
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1 Preserving Eastern Europe’s last Jewish anti-Nazi resistance fort in the forest:
The German Army’s 45th Brigade comes to Lithuania as part of NATO, and ends up right next door to the rapidly sinking remnants of East Europe’s last Jewish anti-Nazi Jewish partisan fort in the forest. Will Germany show respect to this last authentic relic of Jewish resistance? Cherish, preserve, protect, restore it? Take advantage of the magnificent opportunity for education for thousands of soldiers destined for “next door to the the Jewish fort in the forest that late Jewish partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024) showed to thousands of visitors”? Or will their arrival accelerate the fort’s disappearance as they “clean old Jewish cemeteries” elsewhere to fix the “Jewish problem”? Fania’s last wish and legacy. Video of Fania showing us the fort in 2007. Updates to May 2026.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
Tagged Jewish issues in Lithuania (2025)
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Finally, View that ‘a Cemetery is a Cemetery’ Makes it into Lithuanian Media as Debate Sharpens on Fate of Vilnius’s Old Jewish Cemetery
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky
The following is Defending History’s translation into Lithuanian of Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky’s statement of 11 March 2026, Lithuania’s Independence Day. The original English appeared the same day in DH, and on 17 March it was published in The Times of Israel. See also Professor Sid Leiman’s response from New York. For some weeks, there was no mention of it in Lithuanian language media, a priori rather curious given the rabbi’s thirty-two years of resident service in the Lithuanian capital. But by mid April there were cracks in the efforts to keep from Lithuanian language readership the very existence of the opinion that it is in Lithuania’s interest to honor, not humiliate, the five hundred year Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, not to reconstruct a Soviet ruin where throngs would cheer, drink and flush lavatories surrounded by thousands of extant graves of fellow citizens of Vilna. Would this even be contemplated if it were about a half-millennium old cemetery that was the resting place of the great scholars of the ethnic and religious majority?
The ice started to break with veteran journalist Arvydas Jockus’s article in Alfa.lt (16 April), a survey of views that exposed the misimpression that the state-financed official “Lithuanian Jewish Community” is somehow representative of Jewish views (whether local or international). Then, the Vilnius-area Vilniaus kraštas published a translation, on 22 April, albeit with a classic “biased headline” implying that the “purpose of the Jews” is to take away the Soviet Sports Palace. This was somewhat rectified by the publication of a Lithuanian translation with the correct author’s title, carried as a press release by BNS (Baltic News Service) and by Elta.lt, among others, on 24 April. Since 2015, Defending History has offered a section in Lithuanian on these issues.
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, Vilniaus senosios žydų (Piramonto) kapinės Šnipiškėse
Tagged Arvydas Jockus, Piramont Shnipishok cemetery, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Welcoming New Director of Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum
OPINION | MUSEUMS | VILNIUS | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—For several decades, the Defending History community has been providing commentary on Jewish and history related museums in Lithuania and the wider region, primarily in our Museums section, initiated nearly eighteen years ago. Here in Vilnius, we have endeavored to give voice to sectors of modern Jewish (and sometimes non-Jewish) life whose views have had no other channel, especially since the closure, over a decade and a half ago, of the Jewish community’s long-beloved quadrilingual Jewish newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania, that was home to open and vigorous debate for decades, under the inspired editorship of the late Milan Chersonski. Ultimately, it was replaced by a PR type website dedicated to one view only, that of the tiny clique in control of the tens of millions of euros in restitution funding that has excluded the interests of today’s Jewish community, and its healthy diversity of views.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius
Tagged Emanuelis Zingeris, Jewish partisan fort (Lithuania), Jewish State Museum of Lithuania, Milan Chersonski, Sergejus Kanovicius, Sergey Kanovich, The Green House (Vilnius), Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History
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Back in the News: Remnants of Lithuania’s Last anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort, Next Door to New German Army Brigade (Panzerbrigade 45)
[LAST UPDATE]
JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | DR. RACHEL MARGOLIS | BLAMING THE VICTIMS
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It was known as “the Jewish fort” (or “the Yiddish speaking fort”) within the network of anti-Nazi Soviet partisan forest enclaves (the only de facto resistance to Hitler’s occupation of Lithuania, then in alliance with Great Britain, the United States, and the other Allies). It’s 100 or so occupants were all Vilna Ghetto escapees whose families were murdered and who went on to survive, and to become decorated heroes of the free world in the anti-Nazi resistance.
Then, after the rise of free, democratic Lithuania in 1990/1991, they become major educators whose last wish was that the Jewish fort’s remnants be preserved.
Whether coincidence or by sheer majesty of history (or: Higher Powers), the beloved remnants of the Jewish partisan fort have ended up abutting the massive new training ground of the German Army’s 45th Panzer Brigade arriving in Lithuania in the democratic context of NATO and the free world. It is a magnificent opportunity for Germany, and the thousands of young troops being sent “back east” to be educated and educate others about the Holocaust in Lithuania and beyond. Including — the extraordinary saga of Jewish resistance.
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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024) shows us where she and 99 other Jewish escapees from certain death in the Vilna Ghetto lived and fought the Nazis in this underground fort in the forest now right next door to the German Army’s new Brigade in Lithuania. Click on image for 2007 video. Fania explains that this was known as “the Jewish fort” within the wider partisan movement, and is so known in Holocaust resistance history. Yiddish was the everyday language of its 100 or so occupants.
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The new German Army 45th Brigade in Lithuania is right next door to the fort in the Rūdninkai forest (Yiddish: Rudnítsker vald)
Posted in Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Ambassador Donal Denham, Ambassador Simon Butt, German Embassy in Vilnius, German Holocaust remembrance, Germany and the Holocaust, Germany's 45th Battallion in Lithuania, Jewish World War II partisans, Maceva, Rudninkai Jewish partisan fort, S. Kanovicius (Kanovich)
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Vilius Kavaliauskas Protests Plan for Museum in the Middle of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Insisting on Congress Center
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGE 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
VILNIUS—Yesterday’s news of a new “agreement” to turn the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery over from the central government to the municipality of Vilnius (see our report) today elicited a forceful response from Vilius Kavaliauskas, leader of the movement to construct a congress center on the site, and convenor of the 18 January 2026 rally at the National Academy of Sciences. Mr. Kavaliauskas is a highly respected and accomplished historian and journalist, and a former advisor to an earlier Lithuanian prime minister.
The rally 18 January rally immediately made it into Jewish history thanks to Rabbi Elchnon Baron’s defining one-minute address (he was greeted with boos and amicably led off the stage by — Mr. Kavaliauskas). Rabbi Baron responded rapidly to yesterday’s developments in Vilnius. See also the Independence Day declaration on the cemetery issued by the city’s resident Chabad rabbi for 32 years, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Old Vilnius Jewish cemetery (Snipiskes), Shnipishok (Shnipishok) Jewish cemetery at Piramont
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President’s Office, Vilnius Municipality, and Ersatz Jewish Community Leader in Yet Another ‘Agreement’ to Effectively Destroy the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGE 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
VILNIUS—Today’s mainstream media reports in Lrt.lt and in m.diena.lt, among others, reported on yet another “agreement” about the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in the historic Shnípishok district (today’s thriving Šnipiškės), this time between the president’s office and the municipality and the allegedly “rigged election” leader of the state-sponsored, restitution-fueled ersatz official Jewish community. Aside from a brief oblique mention at the end of the m.diena.lt report, there were no mentions of the vast international (and local bona fide Jewish and rabbinic) opposition to the half-millennium old cemetery being turned into anything other than a cemetery.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Old Vilna Jewish cemetery (Snipiskes, Piramont (Shnipishok, Snipiskes (Shnipishok) Jewish Cemetery, Snipiskes cemetery
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Blaming the Victims: Documents and Sources
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 2025
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Preface
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, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Text of Question and Answer in the German Parliament on Lithuania’s Last Remnants of Jewish Partisan Fort in the Forest (right next door to the new German Army Brigade)
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | BLAMING THE VICTIMS
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BERLIN—The German Bundestag’s 16 December 2025 record of questions-and-answers on the remnants of the last Jewish partisan fort in Lithuania, is now online on the German parliamentary website (and available as separate PDF). The Bundestag followed up with a press release affirming respect for the site. See now Defending History’s evolving page on the subject.
Images of the individual pages:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
Tagged Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, German Army 45th Brigade in Lithuania, Last Jewish Partisan Fort in Lithuania, Rachel Margolis, Rudninkai Jewish Fort Remains and German Army
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DH’s Social Media Response to Petition from 53 Elites Calling for ‘Convention Center in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery’
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 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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VILNIUS—The following is the text of Dovid Katz’s post on Facebook today in response to the call by 53 signatories of Lithuania’s declaration of independence for proceeding with a convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish cemetery:
https://defendinghistory.com/53-signatories-of-lithuanias-declaration-of-independence-call-on-president-and-pm-to-proceed-with-a-national-conference-center-surrounded-by-thousands-of-jewish-graves/122914
As Jewish people here in Vilnius, and around the world, were preparing for the first Passover seyder last week, certain powerful forces here arranged for a demand by 53 signatories of Lithuania’s declaration of independence to the president and prime minister to ignore protests from around the world and proceed with the erection of a national convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, where many thousands still lie buried, including some of the major Litvak scholars of the last half-millennium.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, 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, Vilnius
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53 Signatories of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence Call on President and PM to Proceed with a National Conference Center Surrounded by Thousands of Jewish Graves
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 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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VILNIUS—Lithuanian media (including Lrt.lt and Alfa.lt) reported today that 53 signatories of Lithuania’s 1990 declaration of independence have signed a petition addressed to the nation’s president and prime minister calling on them to proceed rapidly with renovation of an old Soviet ruin in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnipishok, today’s Šnipiškės district). They demand preservation of the hated Soviet ruin to commemoration of national Lithuanian heroes of 1990 and 1991 whose universally acclaimed deeds and fate have no connection to this site — where ground radar has shown that thousands of Jewish graves lie undisturbed all around the hated Soviet relic. There is no mention of this, in other words that it is still a cemetery by anyone’s definition. There is however a “concession” that outside the building there would be some memorial to the “former” Jewish cemetery.
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
Tagged Shnipishok), Snipishok (Snipiskes) Jewish cemetery, Snipiskes, Vilna Jewish cemetery (Piramont, Vilnius Old Jewish Cemetery
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Ruta Bloshtein Asks: ‘Dear Mr. Yatom (Yusem): Did This Defamatory Circular Really Come from You?’
OPINION | VILNIUS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | STOLEN-DEMOCRACY OFFICIAL COMMUNITY | CHABAD IN VILNIUS
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by Ruta Bloshtein
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As a member of the very small religiously observant (Orthodox) Jewish community of Vilnius, and as someone born here in Vilnius, I at times feel it important to speak out publicly on current issues of Jewish life. I am writing this open letter first and foremost to express my public question as to whether a shameful document very widely circulated for several months now, purporting to come from the office of the official Head of the “Vilnius Jewish Religious Community” was indeed written by or approved by the personage whose name appears on top: Mr. Shmuel Yatom (whom I recall previously using the spelling Yusem), the official head of this “Vilnius Religious Jewish Community” that is financed by the restitution-fueled official so-called “Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania” which has done so much damage to genuine Jewish life here in Vilnius, not least by dismantling its longtime democratic structure.
Could this libelous screed really have originated from the office of Mr. Yatom (Yusem), official head of the “religious community”?
Posted in A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Chabad in Vilnius, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein, Vilnius
Tagged Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Ruta Bloshtein, Shmuel Yatom, Vilnius Religious Jewish Community, Vilnius synagogue
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Professor Sid Leiman: ‘Superb Declaration by Vinius’s Devoted Rabbi, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky’
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 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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Professor Sid Leiman, the Distinguished Professor of Jewish History and Literature at Touro University’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies, reacted today to Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky’s declaration on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery in the following letter to the editor. See also Prof. Leiman’s earlier publications in Defending History.
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Superb declaration by Vilnius’s devoted Rabbi, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, of why Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery needs to be preserved and restored, and not buried under a Sports Stadium, or a Convention Center, or a Museum of any kind — whether Lithuanian or Jewish.
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), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sid (Shnayer) Leiman
Tagged Jewish cemetery Piramont in Vilna, Jewish cemetery Snipiskes, Old Vilnius Jewish cemetery, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Shnayer Leiman, Sid Leiman
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Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky Issues Powerful Statement on Fate of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery on Occasion of Lithuania’s Independence Day
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 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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Undoing a Soviet Wrong: Preserving the Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery
by Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky
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March 11, 2026
Thirty-six years ago today, Lithuania captured the world’s attention. In the face of the Soviet Union—an empire that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously called the “evil empire” for its ruthless disregard for morality and human dignity—the people of this small nation chose courage over fear, leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Vilnius’s Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, the city’s only resident rabbi for 32 years
In January 1991, unarmed citizens stood before Soviet tanks in the center of Vilnius. Some gave their lives for freedom, facing unimaginable danger for the cause of dignity and self-determination. They did not know how the story would end—but they knew they could no longer live under the degrading brutality and soulless power of the Soviet system. They stood up—and they prevailed.
History has shown again and again that empires ultimately collapse when they lose their moral and spiritual compass. When conscience disappears, even the largest armies and the most formidable arsenals eventually become irrelevant.
Today, Lithuania stands proud as a democratic, forward-looking European nation. Yet it now faces a profound moral question: how should it treat the historic Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery, a sacred site scarred by the callousness of the Soviet regime?
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, 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
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Paupys, Paupers, and Depauperates
OPINION | MEMOIRS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | LITHUANIA | POLITICS OF MEMORY
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by Harry Gorfine
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“Pakelk galva pakelk galva! Paupių piliečiai”
Emigrating from Czarist Vilna to Petticoat Lane – escaping pogroms to reside near Jack the Ripper
From the Ripper to the high seas, heading for the Land Downunder
Returning to Lita – a vicarious journey of ancestral discovery and historical revelation
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius
Tagged Harry Gorfine, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jack the Ripper, Jewish cemetery at Snipiskes (Shnipishok), Jewish immigrants in Victorian London, Vilnius Old Jewish Cemetery
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Happy 85th Birthday to Professor Joseph Parason (Josifas Parasonis)
HAPPY 85th BIRTHDAY TO
Professor Joseph Parason
(Josifas Parasonis)
Key Figure in Vilnius’s Jewish Community
Posted in Josifas Parasonis, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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Books in the Debate (a DefendingHistory.com selection)
[last update]
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see also: BOOKS SECTION
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Not yet published:
Michael Shafir, Competitive Martyrdom [working title].
Draft manuscript of the book circulated to colleagues (for comments and criticism) before the author’s sudden death in 2022. See Defending History’s Michael Shafir section. It is hoped that Professor Shafir’s heirs will enable rapid publication of this major and indispensable work in the field.
2025
Saulius Sužiedėlis,
Reactions, reviews, and citations:
Roland Binet: Autopsy of the Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. Or: How to Subtly Rewrite History
Clemens Heni: Mit Kojak gegen die Rot=Braun-Ideologie
Posted in Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Alexander Gendler (Khurbn), Dan Rabinowitz, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Leyb Koniuchowsky & Jonathan Boyarin, Nazi's Grnddaughter, Ruta Vanagaite & Christoph Dieckmann, Ruta Vanagaite + Efraim Zuroff, Saulius Suziedelis, Silvia Foti
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Meir Bulka: Let’s have Scientific Ground Radar to Document Extant Burials in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE 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 | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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by Meir Bulka (Ramat Gan, Israel & Lublin, Poland)
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For many years, I have followed with deep concern the situation of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės), located beneath all around the ruin of the Soviet-era Sports Palace. The site, historically known as the major Jewish cemetery in the lands of the Grad Duchy of Lithuania, remains a place of great religious and cultural significance for the Jewish people and for the history of Vilnius itself. Last summer’s announcement confirming intentions to turn it into a national conference center is alarming to good-willed Jews and non-Jews alike. The feelings were reinforced by last week’s event promoting the desecration, an event for some reason held at Lithuania’s National Academy of Sciences.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Meir Bulka, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion
Tagged Culture Minister of Lithuania, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish Cemetery Piramont and Snipiskes, Jewish cemetery Vilnius, Meir Bulka
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