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Lithuania
Local and International Opposition to Plans for Convention Center at Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
Posted in Appeals to the European Commission on Piramónt, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Dovid Katz on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues
Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian Bonneville, Committee for the Preservation of European Jewish Cemeteries, CPJCE, Efraim Zuroff, Herbert Block, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Piramont (Snipiskes) Jewish cemetery, Rabbi Herschel Gluck, Rothschild Foundation + Vilnius, Serge Klarsfeld, Sid Leiman, Snipskes cemetery, Vilnius convention center on cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Alan Dershowitz Calls Plans for Convention Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery a Violation of Lithuania’s Constitution
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—Alan Dershowitz, often deemed to be America’s leading constitutional lawyer, confirmed to Defending History this morning that the following statement, that has been circulating in emails and social media, is wholly accurate. This is the precise text sent to DH by Professor Dershowitz:
“The 2015 Seimas resolution green-lighting the conference center on the Shnipishok cemetery in Vilna, Lithuania, undermines the provisions of the Lithuanian Constitution, Articles 22 and 26. These respective provisions in the Constitution protect religious freedom and religious institutions.
“Beyond raising a compelling constitutional issue, this resolution is wrong as a matter of justice, historical preservation, basic decency and the dignity of the dead.”
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), Politics of Memory
Tagged Alan Dershowitz, Piramont (Shnipishok) Jewish cemetery, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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Roland Binet’s New Musical Composition to Mark 80th Anniversary of Onset of the Baltic Holocaust
OPINION | LATVIA | BELGIUM | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | HISTORY | POLITICS OF MEMORY | LEGACY OF JUNE 23rd 1941
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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Just close your eyes and imagine. It is a warm June summer day, you have suffered more than a year of tyranny under the Soviet regime and now the Germans have invaded your country of birth. You are being led with some sixty other fellow Jews into a large garage courtyard. Around, a row of spectators, Lithuanians, even children, and German soldiers of all uniform colors. And, in front of you, thugs armed with batons, cudgels, bludgeons, and metal bars. Then, you can see it clearly: by small groups of around 10 men, your fellow Jews are led to the center and bludgeoned to death, slowly or savagely. They are the luckier ones. Others have high-pressure hoses inserted into their bodies to cause them to explode, to the delight of the adoring audience. This happened in the Lietukis garage in Kaunas on June 27, 1941. And 100% of those who carried out the actual violence, with unfettered enthusiasm, were local Lithuanian nationalists (now glorified in some museums and history books as “anti-Soviet freedom figfhters”).
NEW MUSICAL COMPOSITION ON 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF SUMMER 1941 IS ON YOU TUBE
Posted in Arts, Collaborators Glorified, Latvia, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet
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83 Descendants of People Buried in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery File Appeal; London’s CPJCE and the AJC are Cited as ‘Authorities’
VILNIUS—The following are excerpts in English translation (from the original Lithuanian text) of the 9 June 2021 Appeal filed by 83 plaintiffs still recognized by the court as having proper standing, out of the original 157 claimants, all descendants of persons buried in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (Shnípishok, in today’s Šnipiškės district). These people, whose ancestors paid for their burial plots in freehold perpetuity, do not understand how an EU/NATO member country could plan to cite a national convention center on land surrounded by these graves on all four sides. These excerpts from the translation are limited to paragraphs explicitly citing the London-based “Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe” (CPJCE) which is alleged to accept secret large payments in return for their “permissions and supervisions” of the wanton business-and-profit-led destruction of major Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe.
Posted in American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Arieh Klein, Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, CPJCE, GeoEnvironmental, Geotechnical Engineering, Haifa Geotechnical (Arieh Klein), Piramont Vilna Jewish cemetery, Snipiskes, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery
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June 23rd 2021: 80th Anniversary of Outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust
When “white-armbanders” and LAF followers began to injure, plunder, humiliate and (in 40 locations) murder thousands of Jews across Lithuania (before arrival or set-up of the first German forces or their setting up their rule)
Will the state and its “history” units finally honor the victims or again perpetuate the far-right pro-fascist false history that this was some minor crossfire in a “great revolt against the Soviets”? The Soviets were fleeing Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history — not the local white-armbanded Jew killers.
A freedom fighters’ revolt? Hitlerist white-armbanders surround Jewish women being marched to their death. These militias, responsible for deaths of Jewish civilians in forty locations in Lithuania prior to German arrival, are honored by the state as “freedom fighters”….
The 23rd of June 1941 is the date remembered by Lithuanian Jewry as the outbreak of the Holocaust with onset of widespread murder, dehumanizing degradation and humiliation of civilian Jewish neighbors by the “white armbanders” and “LAF” forces (whose pamphlets declared explicitly their plans for their nation’s Jewish citizens). But instead of honoring the victims, the state’s far-right historians-in-tow glorify the perpetrators as “anti-Soviet rebels,” a well known historic nonsense: the Soviet army was fleeing Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, the largest invasion of human history, not the local Jew-killers with their white armbands. More on the historic background of the Double Genocide revisionism that has evolved into 21 Century Holocaust Denial.
And who will honor the real Lithuanian heroes of 1941 — the amazing, inspirational folks who risked everything to just save a neighbor from the LAF and Hitlerist hordes of the hour?
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Prof. David E. Fishman's Lithuanian Adventures
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, June 23rd celebrations in Lithuania, Prof. David E. Fishman
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Summary in English of Vilnius District Court’s Decision of 10 May 2021
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VILNIUS—In the interest of public information, Defending History has posted the original Lithuanian text of the verdict of the District Court of Vilnius City of 10 May 2021 For the benefit of English readers interested in the main points of the verdict, DH has commissioned an English language summary of the decision, that went against the petition filed by 157 plaintiffs, all of whom are descendants of persons buried in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in the Šnipiškės district of the modern city. The state property bank (Turto bankas) and its partners plan to situate a national convention center in the heart of the site, based on the ruin of the old Soviet sports palace, At the new convention center, thousands would revel each night surrounded by many more thousands of Jewish graves on all four sides. Human rights advocates have pointed out that this would never be the fate of a medieval Christian Lithuanian cemetery,, nor would authorities accept “permissions” from groups proven to take secret payments. For background see, DH’s section chronicling events from 2015 onward, its summary of recent years’ events, and its page slinking to the opposition to the cemetery’s desecration from around the world. Note that the verdict gives the plaintiffs thirty days to appeal. An appeal was duly filed by the plaintiffs within the time allotted
The English summary prepared by Lithuanian legal language experts follows. Note that the reference to the “Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe” (CPJCE) is to the discredited group of Aaronite-Satmar rabbis in London who have accepted large secret payments coinciding with their “permissions” to desecrate cemeteries on the Eastern European ground zero of the Holocaust. Follow the sad history here. Their profitable involvement has been condemned by genuine rabbinic authorities, including the Conference of European Rabbis, as well by virtually all major Litvak (Lithuanian tradition) rabbis internationally.
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)
Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Snipiskes (Piramont) cemetery, Vilna Jewish cemetery
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Dramatic Developments in the Life of Lithuania’s Liveliest Cemetery
[last update]
JUMP TO INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION; TO DH SECTION ON HISTORY OF THE SAGA; TO SECTIONS ON CPJCE; USCPAHA
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June 2021
The plaintiffs in the court case, descendants of people buried in the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, employ a new law firm in Vilnius which files the appeal in June 2021 in accordance with the thirty-day deadline imposed by the court that handed down the May 2021 decision. Meanwhile, on 16 June, officials of the US taxpayer funded “USCPAHA” revel in tweets of lavish photo-ops with high officials in Vilnius, without even meeting Ruta Bloshtein, author of the petition whose number of signatories on this date was 53,486. DH reports.
May 2021
Vilnius Court issues a ruling on May 10 supporting Turto Bankas and the builders in their project to cite a new national convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish cemetery. Text of the decision, which rejects the legal action brought by descendants of the people buried in the cemetery. English summary.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, 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
Tagged Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, Herbert Block, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish cemetery Snipiskes (Piramont), Maggie Haberman, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, Paul Packer (US Commission), USCPAHA
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Yitzhak Arad, World War II Partisan Hero, Veteran of Israel’s War of Independence, Former Leader of Yad Vashem, Dies at 94
Yitzhak Arad (1926-2021)
Yitzhak Arad (originally Rudnitzky), a native of Svintsyán (Švenčionys, Lithuania, some 90 km north of Vilnius) passed away peacefully in Tel Aviv on Thursday. He was laid to rest Friday at Kibbutz Einat near Tel Aviv. His dramatic career included fighting the Nazis as a bold partisan in the forests of Lithuania, fighting with equal heroism in the air and ground forces that won Israel’s war of independence, rising to brigadier general, becoming a major Holocaust scholar and author, serving as director general of Yad Vashem for two decades (1972-1993), and, in the twenty-first century, becoming the first of a series of Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance to be publicly accused by Lithuanian prosecutors of “war crimes” (with not a shred of evidence) as part of a massive campaign of Holocaust revisionism and inversion emanating from the state and its lavishly sponsored “genocide center” and “red-brown” commission as well and numerous elite operatives in the media, academia and literature.
The Holocaust revisionist who started the campaign against Arad in 2006 (in an infamous interview in the antisemitic Respublika representing the state’s “Genocide Center“) is today the nation’s Minister of Defense (!). It was, it turned out, the opening salvo in a years’ long saga that came to include Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015), Ms. Fania Brantsovsky (1922- ), and other heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance regarded as “war criminals” by the far-right revisionist history units financed by East European states and their centers, professors, press maestros and operatives on an industrial scale.
Arad was the first Jewish partisan veteran to be libeled (in 2006) by kangaroo prosecutions of Lithuania’s “history fixing” units in the effort to revise Holocaust history. One major component of the multilayered effort, epitomized by Lithuania’s state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” and its Genocide Research Center, has entailed painting Holocaust victims who survived by joining the resistance as perpetrators and perpetrators (particularly of the atrocities of 1941) as victims. Follow the ins-and-outs in Defending History.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Human Rights, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Yad Vashem, Yitzchak Rudnitzky (Arad), Yitzhak Arad (1926-2021)
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In “Shameful” Decision Lithuanian Parliament Appoints Glorifier of Holocaust Collaborators as Director of State’s “Genocide Center”
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Secret ballot: 76 for, 34 against,8 abstentions, 2 spoiled ballots
Local reports (generally lacking any inkling of the international uproar over adulation of Holocaust perpetrators): 15 min.lt; alfa.lt; alkas.lt; delfi.lt; lrt.lt; lzb.lt; respublika.lt
Defending History broke news of the nomination on 14 April
“No, Sir. This is No Photoshop”
Algemeiner Journal is first foreign publication to cover the affair in reports of 15 April and of 22 April
see also: Arutz Sheva
Earlier: On the Bubnys nomination. In the Algemeiner Journal. On Dr. Bubnys’s record. The state-sponsored Genocide Center. On glorifying collaborators.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Yitzhak Arad
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Silvia Foti
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No Sir. This is No Photoshop.
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VILNIUS—Shortly after Defending History published the news yesterday that Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, longtime chief historian at Lithuania’s state sponsored far-right Genocide Center had been nominated by the speaker of parliament as the center’s new director, news published also by New York’s Algemeiner Journal, a social media campaign began to try to spread a rumor that the DH photo of Dr. Bubnys proudly speaking less than a year ago under banner images of Holocaust collaborators Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa was “photoshopped.” Two of DH’s Vilnius-based team, Julius Norwilla and Dovid Katz, monitored the event from start to finish. Their report appeared the same day, 23 June 2020, the 79th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Instead of honoring the victims — defenseless Jewish citizens, often older rabbis and younger women brutalized and murdered by the “White Armbander” fascists — the event, like many legitimized by Lithuanian government institutions, glorified the killers, who are invariably described as “heroic anti-Soviet rebels.” This is of course a patent historic nonsense. The USSR’s forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion, Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbanded Jew-killers. While the Soviets were in power, the Hitler-backers and murderers of civilian neighbors now adulated as “anti-Soviet rebels” did not fire a single shot. Not even at a local rabbit.
See DH’s sections on Dr. Bubnys, the Genocide Center, and commemorations of 23 June 1941, as well as reviews of his books on the Vilna Ghetto and on the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto.
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yitzhak Arad
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Celebrations of 23 June 1941, Foti + Noreika, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jonas Noreika, Julius Norwilla (Norvila), Kazys Škirpa, Lithuanian Holocaust, Silvia Foti, The Nazi's Granddaughter
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Far-Right Historian Who Poses Proudly with Posters of Holocaust Collaborators Nominated to Head Lithuania’s “Genocide Center”
“Why does Lithuania keep doing this to itself?”
VILNIUS—In a shock to Western allies and the large international Litvak community, the speaker of Lithuania’s Seimas (Parliament) has nominated historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys to be the new director of the state-sponsored Genocide Center (reports in Delfi.lt, LRT, BalticsNews, etc).
UPDATES
22 APRIL: BUBNYS NOMINATION CONFIRMED BY SEIMAS
Secret ballot: 76 for, 34 against,8 abstentions, 2 spoiled ballots
Update of 21 April 2021: “No, Sir. This is No Photoshop”
Algemeiner Journal reports of 15 April and of 22 April
Background:
SEE DH SECTION ON DR. BUBNYS AND STATE HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM IN LITHUANIA
EYEWITNESS REPORT: DR. BYBNYS’S PUBLIC 2020 ADULATION OF COLLABORATORS
SECTION ON THE GENOCIDE CENTER
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, Yitzhak Arad
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center Vilnius, Glorification of Holocaust perpetrators, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jonas Noreika, Kazys Škirpa
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Milan Chersonski: 1937 – 2021
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Milan Chersonski
2 Sept. 1937 – 14 April 2021
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From his dozen years as editor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s former quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania
His writings over the last decade in Defending History
His 80th Birthday celebration in Vilnius
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Posted in Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Obituaries, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Milan Chersonski, Milan Chersonskij, Milan Khersonsky
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President of Germany Honors Major East European ‘History Dissident’ Rachel Kostanian, Longtime Head of Vilnius’s Only Holocaust Museum
RACHEL KOSTANIAN | TRIBUTES ON HER 91ST BIRTHDAY | MUSEUMS | GERMANY
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Andreas Görgen, head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication of Germany’s Federal Foreign Office presents Rachel Kostanian the Presidential Order of Merit signed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Lukas Welz, chairman of AMCHA Germany was there and issued today’s press release. Photos: Florian Krauss for AMCHA Germany.
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Rachel Kostanian in 2010
VILNIUS—Rachel Kostanian, doyenne of Holocaust history dissidents in Lithuania and beyond led, for over a quarter century, a tiny little museum in a wooden green house — it came to be known internationally as The Green House — high up a driveway invisible from the street, that insisted on telling the bitter truth about the Holocaust. Though part of the state’s Jewish museum complex officially, she personally raised support for its own major projects and publications and kept the editorial control independent. Her museum told the truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust, starting with the mass campaign of murder, plunder, humiliation and violence unleashed by the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF), and other local “White-Armbanders” before the first German soldiers even arrived in June 1941. The huge “Genocide Museum” on the city’s main boulevard, by contrast, some seven minutes’ walk away, has a large hall dedicated to glorification of these same collaborators as supposedly heroic leaders of an anti-Soviet “rebellion” (a strange term here, as the Soviets were fleeing Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbanded fascists). As it turns out, the issue comes to the fore in 2021, with the 80th anniversary of the events looming, and the nation’s parliament having named the year in honor of an LAF member accused of atrocities.
Posted in Events, Germany, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian, The Green House
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Berlin Press Release on German President’s Award of Order of Merit to Rachel Kostanian
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The following press release was received today from the office of Lukas Welz, chairman of the board of AMCHA Germany, who nominated Rachel Kostanian for the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Contacts: Email: info@amcha.de. Twitter: @amchade. Facebook: www.facebook.com/amcha.deutschland.
See also: Defending History’s report on the event; tributes and good wishes published on Ms. Kostanian’s 91st birthday; and DH’s Rachel Kostanian section.
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Rachel Kostanian Awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
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From left: Rachel Kostanian; Andreas Görgen, head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication of Germany’s Federal Foreign Office; Lukas Welz, chairman of AMCHA Germany. Below: The Order of Merit. Photos: Florian Krauss for AMCHA Germany.
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BERLIN—Rachel Kostanian was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on February 9, 2021 in Berlin for her lifelong work in researching and remembering the Holocaust in Lithuania. For a quarter century she was director of a small but world-renowned and unique Holocaust museum in Vilnius, Lithuania, known as The Green House that she co-founded as Soviet rule was crumbling in the late 1980s.
Posted in Germany, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Rachel Kostanian, The Green House
Tagged AMCHA Germany, Andreas Görgen, German Presidential Order of Merit, Holocaust educators, Holocaust in Lihtuania, Holocaust mueseums, Lukas Welz, Rachel Kostanian
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Happy Independence Day, Lithuania!
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We all join in celebrating February 16th 1918, just 103 years ago, that ushered in the successful interwar republic. Classic image of the Jews of the shtetl Dorbyán (Darbėnai, northwestern Lithuania) in 1928 celebrating the tenth anniversary of the happy day so cherished by all the peoples in the land. . .
Posted in Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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Commemorating the Holocaust and Healing Wounds in our Molėtai (Malát) District
MEMORIALS FOR JEWISH COMMUNITIES | MOLĖTAI (MALAT) | MUSEUMS
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by Viktorija Kazlienė
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Viktorija Kazlienė
Almost five years ago, an exceptional March of Jewish Remembrance took place in Molėtai, on 29 August 2016. On that occasion, an impressive monument was erected at the site of the mass murder of the Jewish citizens of Molėtai (known in Yiddish as Malát). For that, we are grateful to Tzvi Kritzer, a descendant of Molėtai Jews now living in Israel. Leonas Kaplanas, another son of survivors from the town, now living in Vilnius, also contributed significantly to organizing the March.
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The Molėtai (Malát) March of Jewish Remembrance, 29 August 2016. Photo: Alvydas Balanda
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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Malát (Molėtai), News & Views
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From Milan Chersonski’s Years as Editor of the Quadrilingual ‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’
From 1999 to 2011, Milan Chersonski, now a senior staff writer at Defending History, was editor-in-chief of Jerusalem of Lithuania, the newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania that appeared from November 1989 to early 2011 in four separate editions in four languages — English, Lithuanian, Russian and Yiddish.
Posted in Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views
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Professor Josifas Parasonis (Joseph Parason) Turns 80 in Vilnius
HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY TO
Professor Joseph Parason
(Josifas Parasonis)
Key Figure in Vilnius’s Jewish Community
Major professor of the sciences of buildings and architecture at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU); major national expert on the science of structures
Courageous champion of Jewish causes, ethics and democracy in the community, and the quest for historic truth and justice
Former deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and beloved mentor to young people of all backgrounds
Stalwart member of many years’ standing in the weekly Vilnius Yiddish Literary Circle
Contributor to numerous publications, including Defending History
[Historical note: Prof. Parasonis’s 80th is also the 80th anniversary of the events in Lithuania of 1941. His dramatic escape from his native Kaunas as 4½ month old toddler with his mother, and the fate of the rest of the family, are summarized here]
Posted in Josifas Parasonis, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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