Lithuania

The History of Three “Lithuanian Freedom Army” (LFA) Colonels Who Served the Nazis

Posted on 28 April 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

I will begin with a recent document I found while collecting information about the Lithuanian Freedom Army (LFA), an organization formed during World War II which present-day historians are attempting to portray as an organizer of the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania.

On 31 October 2002, President Valdas Adamkus issued decree no. 1965 titled “On Promoting Volunteer Soldiers to the Rank of Colonel”  which gave the rank of colonel to three “members of the armed resistance: volunteer soldiers and soldiers of Lithuania’s pre-war military,” namely, Tauras military district chief Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas (posthumously); Vytautas military district chief Vincas Kaulinis-Miškinis (posthumously); and Vytis military district chief Jonas Krištaponis (also posthumously). Five years later the president noticed he had made a mistake regarding one surname and on 5 January 2007, issued decree no. 1K-849 to correct the mistake, replacing Jonas Krištaponis with Juozas Krikštaponis (aka Krištaponis).

Regarding the anti-Soviet resistance, there really isn’t any argument: most of the LFA fighters heroically fought against the occupiers and died in that struggle.

Regarding the anti-Nazi resistance, however, many doubts are raised. These doubts arise because of the LFA’s position on the mass murder of Jews.

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Posted in Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged | Comments Off on The History of Three “Lithuanian Freedom Army” (LFA) Colonels Who Served the Nazis

“Prime Minister” of Lithuania’s 1941 Nazi Puppet Government to be Glorified, Re-interred and Subject of a Commemorative Conference at Vytautas Magnus University

Posted on 3 May 2012 by Defending History

VILNIUS—In a move causing anguish and an aura of disbelief among Holocaust survivors and their families, and Lithuania’s small Jewish community, the remains of a major 1941 collaborator of Nazi rule will be re-interred this month with full honors during a series of events designed to honor him, and by extension, wider institutionalized local Nazi collaboration.

Lithuanian media, including BNS, Bernardinai.lt, Kauno diena and 15min.lt have reported that the remains of Juozas Brazaitis (Ambrazevičius), who died in the United States in 1974, will be re-interred from Putnam, Connecticut, to the Church of the Resurrection in Kaunas this month. En route, he will be honored in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in a ceremony slated for 17 May. In a statement, Andrius Kupčinskas, the mayor of Kaunas, said: “Every head of state must be honored by the state.”

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“Correcting the Past”

Posted on 8 May 2012 by Defending History

OPINION

by Milan Chersonski

 

On 2 May 2012, the Lithuanian mass media reported that the mayor of Kaunas, Andrius Kupčinskas, in his capacity as chief of a special working group, announced that the remains of Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, chairman of the Lithuanian Provisional Government in 1941, who was buried in Connecticut in 1974, will be transported to Lithuania for a reburial with full honors.

MORE COVERAGE HERE

Kupčinskas said that the remains of Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis will be brought to Vilnius Airport on 17 May 2012, honored in the capital, and then solemnly escorted to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Kaunas and placed into a columbarium in the church yard. Lithuanian Government officials have confirmed the announcement.

It was not however reported precisely who took the decision or precisely why the decision to rebury Ambrazevičius’s remains was taken. These are not the remains of an ordinary citizen. He was the leader of Lithuania’s 1941 Provisional Government (PG). Transporting his remains to the motherland is a state act, which carries with it the implication of immortalizing the memory of a historical figure in the solemn chronicles of the nation.

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, History, Lithuania, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on “Correcting the Past”

Archbishop Adds his Blessing to the Nazi Collaborator being Reburied with Full Honors

Posted on 11 May 2012 by Defending History

Many usually admiring readers of Bernardinai.lt were shocked today by an article  by Archbishop S. Tamkevičius which contains the following paragraph (here in translation), and which was not followed by any editor’s comment.

“This month Juozas Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius, the former prime minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania who worked for the anti-Nazi underground during the German occupation and after the war actively made the case for Lithuanian independence in the world, returns from America to Lithuania. His contributions to Lithuania are enourmous. But he didn’t just love Lithuania, he also loved God. Having chosen for himself in his youth friends who were sincerely faithful young people, and taking active part in the activities of the Futurists, he matured into a profoundly faithful man and for his entire life was consistently faithful to the principles of Christianity and nationalism. Professor Juozas Brazaitis is a living example of how much faith gives to a person who adheres to it consistently.”

The “return to Lithuania” refers to the flying over and reburying with full honors, at the culmination of four days of commemorative festivities, of the “prime minister” of the 1941 Nazi puppet “Provisional Government” in Kaunas which oversaw the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust at the hands of its associated LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), and then during the first weeks of Nazi genocide between late June and early August 1941. There was no public statement of regret from Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) during his subsequent decades in the United States, where he died in 1974.

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Joint Statement by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum on the Ceremonies for the Reburial of Juozas Brazaitis (Ambrazevičius)

Posted on 14 May 2012 by Defending History

The following statement, drafted by the head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, appeared today on the community’s website, and is republished here with permission. Presumably it will appear also on the website of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. [Update of 15 September 2012: it has not thus far appeared on the museum’s website.]

 

On May 19 and 20 of this year rites to re-inter Juozas Brazaitis (Ambarazevčius), the head of the Provisional Government of Lithuania, and commemorations and events in connection with this will take place in Kaunas.

Every person has the right to leave this world maintaining their inherited traditions and religious convictions. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum do not protest and are not expressing dissatisfaction over the return of the mortal remains of Juozas Brazaitis (Ambarazevčius) to Lithuania.

Nonetheless, we are deeply hurt because of the ceremonies and events surrounding the reburial ceremony of this controversial political figure. This figure is connected with the actions of the puppet Provisional Government of Lithuania and with the calls by the Lithuanian Activist Front for inciting the mass murder of Jews which led to the execution of barbaric “justice” by the mob.

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Text of the Letter from MEP Leonidas Donskis on the Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis Festivities

Posted on 15 May 2012 by Defending History

MEP Leonidas Donskis’s letter, in reply to Krystyna Anna Steiger, author of the international petition against the VMU event, was released today by the MEP for immediate publication in DefendingHistory.com (more background here).

The full text is as follows:

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Want to Honor the Head of the 1941 Nazi Puppet Government? Website Claims Seimas Will Provide Free Transportation

Posted on 17 May 2012 by Defending History

According to the right-wing Lithuanian website “Dešinioji Mintis,” you have until May 18th to register for free transportation, courtesy of the Chancellery of the Parliament in Vilnius, to the events in Kaunas scheduled for May 19th and 20th to honor the memory of the head of Nazi puppet “provisional government” (“PG”) of 1941. Specifically, you can attend the memorial conference on the 19th, and/or the re-interment ceremony on the 20th. There is specific reference to the offer being for the good of young people who are not “apathetic.” Contact information at the Lithuanian parliament (Seimas) is also provided.

Is this really how the nation’s parliament wants to educate the country’s youth?

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Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Culture Minister Personally Signed off on €8,700 (US $11,000) Expenditure to Honor Wartime Fascist Leader

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Defending History

Members of Lithuania’s small and fragile remnant Jewish community were left in shock as word was spreading that quite secretively, the country’s prime minister and culture minister personally signed off this past March on the 30,000 litas allotment for the expenses of reburying and honoring the wartime fascist leader, Juozas Ambrazevičius (later Brazaitis). Ambrazevičius, as the Nazi puppet “prime minister” during the first weeks of the war in 1941, signed the orders confirming “all means” against Jews (though calling for public executions to halt), for a concentration camp for Lithuania’s Jews, and for the herding of all of Kaunas’s Jews into a ghetto within four weeks (English translation here).

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, in partnership with the Vilna Gaon Jewish museum, has issued a statement of protest against government sponsorship of the events.

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Statement in the Lithuanian Parliament by MPs Vytenis Andriukaitis and Algirdas Sysas

Posted on 19 May 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis and Algirdas Sysas

The following is a translation of the statement submitted to the Lithuanian parliament (the Seimas) on 17 May 2012 by MPs Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis and Algirdas Sysas. The original is available here.

MPs Andriukaitis and Sysas in the Seimas (foreground). Photo courtesy Image Archive of the Seimas.

Several days ago we received an invitation to a ceremony for the reburial of the remains of Juozas Brazaitis Ambrazevičius (1903–1974) in the churchyard of the Kaunas Church of the Resurrection of Christ. A booklet was included with the invitation recounting the life and deeds of Juozas Brazaitis Ambrazevičius. It included his academic and pedagogical activity and his participation in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet resistance. It also presented an excerpt from a letter by Joshua Eilberg, chairman of the Immigration, Citizenship and International Law Sub-Committee of the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, saying that an investigation into the Juozas Brazaitis Ambrazevičius’s collaboration with the Nazis during World War II had been stopped.

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Tim Snyder, in Vilnius, Comments Publicly on the Reburial and Glorification of 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister

Posted on 19 May 2012 by Defending History

It seemed to many Vilnius observers this week that Yale historian Professor Timothy Snyder and Yivo director Mr. Jonathan Brent were both “brought” to Lithuania for various events that would, without their foreknowledge, coincide with the week of the Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis glorification ceremonies financed by the Lithuanian government. These ceremonies have now attracted considerable international criticism (see page one).

It was hoped by some in high places, it is alleged, that their presece would deflect international attention from the honoring of the Nazi puppet prime minister (it didn’t), and that their own fabled reluctance to criticize the Lithuanian government unambiguously would in its own way add legitimacy to the controversial events (it won’t).

Background:

Yivo’s temporary moral decline

Far Right’s abuse of Professor Snyder’s Bloodlands

Though neither of the two Foreign Ministry Chosen, both painfully controversial among Holocaust survivors and their families, would issue during their stay in Vilnius a public statement on the series of state-sponsored events to honor a Nazi collaborator, Professor Snyder did answer a question about the reburial in a public interview carried by 15min.lt. The question and answer are as follows:

— There is a controversy in Lithuania surrounding the reburial of Juozas Brazaitis, leader of the provisional government, with the support of the government. Do you think it’s a right thing to do?

“I am going to choose my words very carefully here. I think before you rebury anyone, you should think very very hard and probably wait a very very long time because once you rebury somebody once, you can’t rebury them again.”


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Dramatic Confrontation on the Floor of the Lithuanian Parliament

Posted on 20 May 2012 by Defending History

DefendingHistory.com has been able to confirm the following exchange on the floor of the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) on 17 May 2012. MP Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, the Social Democrats’ senior spokesperson for foreign affairs asked a question of the prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, and the foreign minister, Audronius Ažubalis, both from the ruling Conservative / Christian Democrats’ faction. It was answered by the foreign minister.

The following is a translation of the exchange.

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An Open Letter to Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Defending History

 O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

NOTE: This is an authorized republication of today’s letter, which first appeared in the online Algemeiner Journal. [Update: It then appeared in the AJ’s print edition on 25 May, pp. 2, 4, 5.]

 

Dear Tim,

Greetings, and sorry we missed each other in Vilnius this time. I write in the context of our ongoing and respectful conversation, which started in the Guardian (thanks to Matt Seaton, and prominently including Efraim Zuroff) back in 2010 (I, II, III, IV); continuing through our meeting at Yale, the Aftermath Conference in Melbourne, Australia, in 2011 (thanks to Mark Baker, and with participation of Jan Gross and Patrick Desbois), and more recently, via my review of your book Bloodlands (along with Alexander Prusin’s The Lands Between), in East European Jewish Affairs.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Books, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, Yivo Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on An Open Letter to Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder

Kaunas University History Professor on the Glorification of Nazi Puppet PM Ambrezevicius-Brazaitis

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Defending History

 

The following is a translation of today’s Lietuvos rytas publication of an interview with Vytautas Magnus University professor of history and director of its Émigré Studies Center Egidijus Aleksandravičius. The interview was conducted by Valdas Bartaševičius. In the interview’s final paragraph, the professor decries the university administrators who cancelled (under pressure) one of the festive events celebrating reburial of the Nazi puppet prime minister (who personally signed papers ordering the Jewish citizens of his city, Kaunas, into a ghetto, after others were massacred at the Seventh Fort), explaining (see final paragraph, below): “This wasn’t the academic community but a decision of the VMU administration which became frightened that they were going to get hit over the head with a club by the Jews.”  The text of the interview as PDF (Lithuanian original in Lrytas.lt).

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Egidijus Aleksandravičius: “By Reburying Brazaitis, we Wanted to Show that the Lithuanian Drama hasn’t Yet Ended”

by Valdas Bartaševičius (Lietuvos rytas)

The mortal remains of the controversial head of the Lithuanian Provisional Government, Juozas Brazaitis, were flown from the United States to Lithuania and reburied Sunday in Kaunas.

The ceremony for the reburial of Brazaitis gave rise to protests by Jews who judge negatively the activities of the Provisional Government of 1941, which published antisemitic statements.

This led to the decision by Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) not to allow a conference on Brazaitis which had been planned there.

“Are Jews justified in being angered by the idea of honoring Brazaitis by reburying his remains in his homeland?” Lietuvos Rytas asked Egidijus Aleksandravičius, a VMU professor and director of the Émigré Studies Center.

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Litvak Devastates Second Kaunas Conference on Nazi Collaborator Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis

Posted on 26 May 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

last revision 26 May 2012, 23:55.


The second conference in Kaunas on the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister and Holocaust collaborator Juozas Ambrazevičius cum Brazaitis, held Thursday, May 24, was treated to some harsh facts presented by a living Litvak, Kovno (Kaunas) historian and Jewish tour guide Chaim Bargman.

Although Vytautas Magnus University initially agreed to and then reneged on a deal with the Lithuanian government to host the earlier “academic conference” last Saturday May 19 purely to adulate the “prime minister” of 1941, they changed their minds yet again—possibly under influence from chairman of their board of directors, former president Valdas Adamkus, who in 2011 celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the LAF fascists—and provided university resources this week for a second event announced as an open discussion event. To their great credit, they did webcast the event and have posted the video (here).

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Posted in Chaim Bargman, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Geoff Vasil, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Litvak Devastates Second Kaunas Conference on Nazi Collaborator Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis

Unelected 1941 Pro-Nazi Provisional Government of Lithuania Never Intended Good for Country

Posted on 28 May 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

 

In May Lithuania celebrated the return of the ashes of the Nazi puppet prime minister of June, 1941, Juozas Ambrazevičius (who changed his surname to Brazaitis as a matter of convenience when he began using papers issued to one Brazaitis). The schizophrenic nature of the events were evident from the start, from the Kubilius government’s resolution allocating 30,000 litas in funding to celebrate the Lithuanian Nazi which, several items down the list, also allocated 3,000 litas for a project to “name the names,” to draw up a list of Lithuanian Holocaust victims, in conjunction with the Yad Vashem institution in Jerusalem.

The dissociative shell game continued when the government and state institutions sought to pawn off the events they financed on other institutions: the Catholic Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Kaunas, and an “academic conference/commemoration” planned at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. After a scandal broke and former professor now MEP Leonidas Donskis published an eloquent protest on DH, the rector of VMU, who didn’t want the heat, told the Nazi celebrators to find another venue, one supplied by the Kaunas municipality, the chambers of the Kaunas city council. Then, in keeping with the theme of schizophrenia, VMU decided to allow another “academic conference” on university premises, initially with the exact same list of speakers as the banned event.

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Explosive Reactions to Saulius Berzhinis’s New Film on the Holocaust in Jurbarkas (Yúrberik)

Posted on 7 June 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N  /  F I L M   R E V I E W

by Milan Chersonski

 

Vilnius film director Saulius Berzhinis

There has recently been extensive Lithuanian media coverage of a conflict between the authorities of the city Jurbarkas, Lithuania, and the film company Filmų Kopa, founded by film director Saulius Berzhinis (Beržinis) and managed by Ona Biveinienė.

To mark the seventieth anniversary of the beginning of World War II in Lithuania and the beginning of the total annihilation of its Jews, the Jurbarkas regional museum commissioned a documentary about Jews who lived in the town before World War II, paid for by the Ministry of Culture and the budget of the municipality. Filmų Kopa was awarded the commission and made a documentary called “When Yiddish was Heard in Jurbarkas.” The town’s name in Yiddish is Yúrberik or Yúrburg.

As the film has become a matter of sharp conflict, it is worthwhile in the first instance to take a good look at the actual product that Filmų Kopa delivered to the residents of Jurbarkas.

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Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Film, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Media Watch, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Saulius Beržinis | Comments Off on Explosive Reactions to Saulius Berzhinis’s New Film on the Holocaust in Jurbarkas (Yúrberik)

A Heroic Narrative in Violation of Good Conscience

Posted on 11 June 2012 by Defending History

 

O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

 

The ceremonial reburial of the head of the Lithuanian Provisional Government (PG), Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, which recently took place, and the tension and details associated with it, said more about Lithuania today than all the news and commentary over the past twenty years put together.

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Reply to the Economist on Lithuania’s Recent Reburial of the 1941 Nazi Puppet “Prime Minister”

Posted on 15 June 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

This is a slightly edited reprint of the comment posted today in reply to the article “Lithuania under the Nazis: Hero or Villain?” on the Economist’s online “Eastern Approaches” section, at: http://www.economist.com/comment/1472788#comment-1472788.

Many thanks to the Economist and its online Eastern Approaches section for highlighting this important issue that so many others have just swept under the rug. But frankly speaking, it does our Lithuanian friends no good to slant each report in the direction of sophisticated apologetics for the Lithuanian (and other regional) governments’ tragic veering to the far right on issues of historic integrity, human rights, freedom of speech, antisemitism, racism, gay rights, and perhaps above all, state-sponsored adulation of local Nazi war criminals and collaborators, and actual local mass murderers of the region’s Jewish population. It was, alas, a level of participation that resulted in the Baltics having the highest percentage of murder of its Jewish population in Holocaust-era Europe.

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On the Recent Amateur Treatments of the Role of the Provisional Government of 1941 in the Mass Media

Posted on 29 June 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich

Authorized translation from Lithuanian by Geoff Vasil of the 26 June 2012 statement issued by Dr. Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. Posted on the community’s website at: http://www.lzb.lt/en/home/691-recent.html. According to sources in the community, Dr. Alperovich wrote this in response to an article on Delfi.lt by Vidmantas Valiušaitis called “Why are Historians Afraid of the Facts?” (Lithuanian text here), and when Delfi allegedly declined to publish Dr. Alperovich’s response,  the community placed it on its own webpage and elsewhere.

Recently there has been an increasing number of internet articles by amateur, non-professional authors without training in history expressing approval for the actions of the 1941 Provisional Government of Lithuania toward the Jews of Lithuania, without regard for the antisemitic actions of that government in the context of the mass murder of the Jews of Lithuania already underway at that time.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community earlier provided an assessment of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Provisional Government.

It is saddening that the authors of these texts choose to ignore the conclusions of professional historians as well as the findings of the special commission established by decree of former president Valdas Adamkus and operating under the Lithuanian government, which clearly and categorically judges the actions of the LAF and PG thus:

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Genocide Center (Vilnius), History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Shimon Alperovich (1928 – 2014) | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on On the Recent Amateur Treatments of the Role of the Provisional Government of 1941 in the Mass Media

Another “Resistance Hero” or — War Criminal who Selected Jews for Mass Murder?

Posted on 29 June 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

Konstantinas Liuberskis–Žvainys is a figure with a curious biography.

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