Lithuania

2025 Plans for new ‘Collegium’ (and Seimas Law) to Glorify Holocaust’s June 1941 LAF Killers of their Jewish Neighbors

Posted on 23 June 2025 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 19 MARCH 2025]

A Vilnius professor, a former foreign minister, and group of Conservative (Homeland Union) parliamentarians announce ‘collegium’ to glorify 1941 LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front / ‘White-Armbander’ ) Hitlerists who murdered their neighbors — effectively ‘initiating on the ground’ the Lithuanian Holocaust

The professor. Official announcement on website of the Seimas. Article citing former foreign minister. Article explaining that a new Seimas law will mandate spending on far-right history revisionism to smear the historic narrative (the Western narrative, the Holocaust history narrative) as Kremlin-inspired (!) while glorifying the killers of thousands of innocent Jewish neighbors. Far from helping the name of today’s free and democratic Lithuania, this Seimas proposal brings self-inflicted damage of the worst sort — glorifying the perpetrators of the early days and weeks of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

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OUR TAKE

Leonidas Donskis answers Prof. Girnius from the grave:

‘When will the truth finally set us free?’

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NOW IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on 2025 Plans for new ‘Collegium’ (and Seimas Law) to Glorify Holocaust’s June 1941 LAF Killers of their Jewish Neighbors

Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe

Posted on 20 June 2025 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATES (SEE AT END). ORIGINAL DATE OF PUBLICATION: 26 MAY 2025]
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EASTERN EUROPE | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GERMANY | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—International media has reported in detail on last week’s military ceremonies in Vilnius celebrating the permanent installation of thousands of German soldiers as part of NATO forces in Lithuania, southernmost of the three Baltic republics. The new entity is “Germany’s 45th Armoured Brigade” (Panzerbrigade 45) that is also known as the “Lithuania Brigade”.

The Defending History community is a staunch supporter of the values and security needs of the European Union, NATO, the Western alliance of free and democratic nations, and has from day one condemned the medieval, barbaric February 2022 invasion and unleashing of mass death and destruction upon Ukraine by Putin’s Russian Federation forces. Our support includes reproducing a statement that has appeared for over a decade on p. 1 of DefendingHistory.com (right hand column). As stated there, adherence to the democratic values of the EU and the NATO alliance includes cherishing the free-speech right to criticize: efforts to rewrite Holocaust history by Eastern Europe’s ultranationalist far right; efforts to defame the victims, including Jewish partisans who fought valiantly against the Nazis; efforts to disseminate Double Genocide revisionism in the realm of Holocaust and World War II history; efforts to glorify Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators; efforts to curtail free speech by criminalizing or delegitimizing views that oppose these efforts.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe

Books in the Debate (a DefendingHistory.com selection)

Posted on 19 June 2025 by Defending History

[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 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, Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania

Reactions, reviews, and citations:

Clemens Heni: Mit Kojak gegen die Rot=Braun-Ideologie

2024

Chris Heath, No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust

Review by Roland Binet.

2023

Paul Srodecki and Daria Kozlova (eds), War and Remembrance. World War II and the Holocaust in the Memory Politics of Post-Socialist Europe

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Posted in Books, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Rūta Vanagaitė | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Books in the Debate (a DefendingHistory.com selection)

Mid June 2025 Events in Vilnius

Posted on 12 June 2025 by Defending History

EVENTS | VILNIUS

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On Yivo’s 100th:

Dr. Jonathan Brent, director of Yivo, speaking at National Picture Gallery Tuesday 17 June at 3 PM.

Professor David E. Fishman (JTS), speaking at National Library’s Judaic Studies Center Tuesday 17 June at 5 PM. Registration.

[Also, now online: Dovid Katz’s April 2025 lecture on Yivo’s 100th at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library (video).]

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Posted in Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mid June 2025 Events in Vilnius

Bravo to VILNIUS Jewish Community for Standing Up for Democracy, Justice and Continuity of Lithuania’s Jewish Peoplehood

Posted on 6 June 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | AJC MISADVENTURES IN LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—The following is an edited and updated version of Dovid Katz’s post on Facebook today in reaction to the  statement posted today by the Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) on its website and on Facebook. An English translation of the statement appears in Defending History.

[Updates: See also the media report in Alfa.lt; the statement posted by Jewish Heritage Lita (JHL) on its website; Defending History’s newly compiled section, Lithuania: a Textbook Case of East European Restitution for Lost Jewish Assets Abused to Dismantle and Diminish a Vibrant Jewish Community, which includes contributions over the years by Ruta Bloshtein, Alexander Chernov, Pinchos Fridberg, Simon Gurevich, Leon Kaplan, Arkady Kurliandchik, Zecharya Olickij, Josif Parasonis, the late Jacob Pilansky, among others.]

BRAVO to our democratic Vilnius Jewish Community (which represents over 1,600 Jewish people in Vilnius, constituting the majority of today’s small Jewish community in Lithuania) for proudly standing up and speaking out on this week’s monkey elections at the corrupt “Lithuanian Jewish Community” (which is state-sponsored, via “restitution” no less, deriving from the property values of the annihilated prewar religious institutions). Their statement is on Facebook and their website.

In the middle of the 2017 election campaign, when a certain conflict-of-interest passport lawyer saw that her opponent was winning, the rules were changed mid-campaign to disenfranchise the living Jewish people of Lithuania and replace them with kangaroo “associations” comprising entities themselves receiving monies and/or other benefits from the same restitution.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Dovid Katz, 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 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bravo to VILNIUS Jewish Community for Standing Up for Democracy, Justice and Continuity of Lithuania’s Jewish Peoplehood

Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL) Issues Statement of Support for Vilnius Jewish Community’s Boycott of Sham Community Elections that Disenfranchise Living Jewish People of Lithuania

Posted on 6 June 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | AJC MISADVENTURES IN LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—The following is a condensed version of the statement issued today by Jewish Heritage Lita (JHL), signed by its president, Rabbi Elchonon Baron. The full statement appears on the JHL website. It is in support of the Vilnius Jewish Community’s statement (also on Facebook) issued on 5 June 2025. See also Defending History’s reaction.

We at Jewish Heritage in Lita concur with the just position of the Vilna Jewish Community, rejecting the fake elections at the LZB [official state-sponsored ‘Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania’ — ed.]. As the largest, most democratic and authentic Jewish organization in Lithuania, the VJC accurately represents the true voice of the vast majority of Lithuanian Jewry.

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Posted in A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, 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, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Comments Off on Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL) Issues Statement of Support for Vilnius Jewish Community’s Boycott of Sham Community Elections that Disenfranchise Living Jewish People of Lithuania

Vilnius Jewish Community Issues Public Statement on Sham Elections of Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Posted on 6 June 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | AJC MISADVENTURES IN LITHUANIA

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VILNIUS—The following is an English translation of the statement posted today by the Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) on its website and on Facebook.

Among reports and reactions: in Alfa.lt; the statement posted by Jewish Heritage Lita (JHL); Dovid Katz’s post on n Facebook and in Defending History; Defending History’s newly compiled section, Lithuania: a Textbook Case of East European Restitution for Lost Jewish Assets Abused to Dismantle and Diminish a Vibrant Jewish Community, which includes contributions over the years by Ruta Bloshtein, Alexander Chernov, Pinchos Fridberg, Simon Gurevich, Leon Kaplan, Arkady Kurliandchik, Zecharya Olickij, Josif Parasonis, the late Jacob Pilansky, among others.]

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Statement of the Vilnius Jewish Community

The Vilnius Jewish Community announces that it will not participate in the reporting and election meeting of the Lithuanian Jewish Community to be held on June 6 of this year.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, 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, Vilnius | Comments Off on Vilnius Jewish Community Issues Public Statement on Sham Elections of Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Chris Heath’s ‘No Road Leading Back’ on Ponar and on How we Remember the Holocaust

Posted on 31 May 2025 by Defending History

BOOKS | PONAR | LITHUANIA

 

BOOK REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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Chris Heath, No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust, Schocken Books, 2024.

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In 2016, Chris Heath read an item in the New York Times about a tunnel that had been discovered “at a Holocaust killing site”. It was referring to  Ponar near Vilna (Yiddish Ponár, Polish Ponary, today’s Paneriai outside Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania). It is around ten kilometers (six miles) southwest of Vilnius city center. This caught his attention and he decided to write a book about this heroic feat. The main title is borrowed from two lines that Shmerke Kaczerginski had written in his poem “Shtiler, Shtiler” (Quieter, quieter) that was put to music and sung in the Vilna Ghetto.

Ponar: 100,000 persons killed by bullets from summer 1941 to spring of 1944, about 70% of them Jews including women, children, and the elderly. 

Ponar: List of twelve escapees from Ponar who survived (April 1944): Josef Bielic, Abraham Blazer, Yitzhak Dogin, Yuli Farber, Shlomo Gol, David Kantorovich, Zalman Matzkin, Lejzer Owsiejczyk, Konstantin Potanin, Motke Zeidel, Adam Zinger, Peter Zinin

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Posted in Books, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Roland Binet | Comments Off on Chris Heath’s ‘No Road Leading Back’ on Ponar and on How we Remember the Holocaust

Rašella Galinienė, Head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, Lithuania) Protests an Inappropriate Memorial Plonked on a Holocaust Mass Grave

Posted on 30 May 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | CEMETERIES | COMMUNITY COMMEMORATION | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai) speaks out to protest insensitive desecration of a Holocaust mass grave site where Jews of Yánishok (Joniškis) were massacred. Photo: Shavl Jewish Community.

Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, northern Lithuania) has led a public call for removal of a series of sculptures erected by a nearby local government authority directly atop the actual graves, in the forest, of hundreds of murdered Jews of the shtetl Yánishok (or Yáneshik, today’s Joniškis). The issue has been reported on prominently in Lithuanian media, including on LRT TV, and the LRT news portal (where mechanical translation to English captures nearly all the text accurately). The media reports dwell on issues of permits, permissions, consultations and the difference of opinion between the Shavl community and the local authorities in the district where the forest mass grave is situated. They report accurately, that the late and long standing beloved leader of the Shavl community, Sania Kerbl (Kerbelis, 1963–2024) expressed — in concord with Jewish tradition and law of thousands of years standing — his staunch opposition to anything being constructed or erected on cemeteries and burial sites.

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Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rašella Galinienė, Head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, Lithuania) Protests an Inappropriate Memorial Plonked on a Holocaust Mass Grave

International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 22 May 2025 by Defending History

[last update]

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW MUSEUM/MEMORIAL PROJECT | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

See Note below

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Videos Online

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Written statements:

Rabbi Elchonon Baron

Ruta Bloshtein

Rabbi S. J. Feffer

Bernard Fryshman

Dovid Katz

Andrius Kulikauskas

Sid Leiman

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Rabbi Elchonon Baron and Julius Norvila Issue Appeal to Mayor of Vilnius for ‘full restoration’ of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 21 May 2025 by Defending History

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW MUSEUM/MEMORIAL PROJECT | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—The following public letter to the mayor of Vilnius from Rabbi Elchonon Baron appeared today on the website of Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL):

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Honorable Valdas Benkunskas

Mayor of Vilnius

While the municipality’s initiative to mark the borders of the Šnipiškės cemetery, in the Jewish world also known as Piramont cemetery, is a positive step, it’s concerning that a significant portion of the cemetery will fall outside these newly defined boundaries.

Furthermore, the official statement by the Vilnius city municipality, dated May 9, 2025, stating that “…in the 19th century the cemetery was officially closed and most of the remains were reburied,” is inaccurate and confusing. To clarify the historical details:

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, 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), Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron and Julius Norvila Issue Appeal to Mayor of Vilnius for ‘full restoration’ of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Posted on 21 April 2025 by Defending History

[2 May 2025 update at end of post]

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | A STOLEN ELECTION | CHABAD IN VILNIUS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Even people who “thought they had seen everything” were taken aback a week ago, when without prior warning Vilnius’s only functioning synagogue was closed down on the occasion of the first seyder night of Passover, one of the most sacred Jewish calendar days of the year. The “explanation” did come shortly thereafter in the form of an official 13 April 2025 statement on the official website of the restitution fueled “Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania” (the “LJC” as is it is still known from the long time title “Lithuanian Jewish Community”, LZB in Lithuanian). That is the “community” that disenfranchised virtually all the remaining few thousand Jewish people in Lithuania, by changing the system of voting (in the middle of an election campaign season!) from choice by community members to that of “associations” mostly benefiting from restitution funds. This transpired during the allegedly rigged 2017 community elections. See also the contemporary JTA reports (here and here). The official community has received tens of millions of dollars from the government in restitution.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Chabad in Vilnius, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF that in 1941 Killed Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Posted on 19 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LEGACY OF 23 JUNE 1941 | 2011 ATTEMPTS TO SANITIZE THE LAF  |  LAF’S INTENTIONS IN WRITING | ŠKIRPA’S PLANS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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OPINION

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The eminent Harvard and Univ. of Chicago educated American-Lithuanian professor and public affairs analyst, Kęstutis Girnius, tried a decade and a half ago to mobilize support for a far-right inspired dry-clean of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF, Lietuvių aktyvistų frontas, “white armbanders”) which was the 1941 organization that did not shoot a rabbit when the Soviets were in power (1940-1941) but began to murder thousands of innocent Jewish neighbors the moment the Soviet army started its panicked flight eastward, and there was no authority to stop them. Hitler’s local henchmen declared an “independence” that included the oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the commitment to rid Lithuania of all its Jews, and the unleashing of barbaric murder before the Germans even arrived or set up their control. Any true friend of Lithuania will understand that this is the kind of pro-fascist revisionism that beautiful, modern, tolerant, democratic Lithuania needs like a hole in the head.

Girnius’s gushing public announcement of the new initiative to whitewash the LAF was announced in an article in Delfi.lt this week, heralding the formation of a group of Conservative (Homeland Union party) members of parliament who are forming a “collegium” for this  task. If that’s correct, it would, in one fell swoop, undermine the magnificent contributions of so many great truth-telling Lithuanian ethicists of the past three and a half decades, including Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Saulius Beržinis, Aleksandras Bosas, Valentinas Brandišauskas, Algirdas Brazauskas, Leonidas Donskis, Silvia Foti, Andrius Kulikauskas, Liudas Truska, Rūta Vanagaitė, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Tomas Venclova, Linas Vildžiūnas, and numerous others.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF that in 1941 Killed Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Another Kind of Final Solution?

Posted on 14 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | MUSEUMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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by Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

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When speaking about the Holocaust in Lithuania, it is customary to cite 95%, that is, more than two hundred thousand people. This is not only the lives lost, but also schools, synagogues, kheyders, yeshivas, books, newspapers. This is the white tablecloth and fresh challah of Shabbos, these are the Sabbath conversations in the bes-medresh, which tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tinsmiths in the shtetls wait for all week long, for whom conversations about the Torah are a long-awaited spiritual respite. Today, in such a former synagogue you can see a carpentry workshop, a fire department, a gym, a bathhouse, a funeral services business, and at best a library… After all, there are no more Jews. In the town of Butrimonys (Yiddish: Butrimánts), the name of the former owner, Pertzikovich, has been preserved above the entrance to one house. We stopped to take a photo. A young woman with a little girl came out.

“Yes, Pertzikovich used to live here. And now we live here,” she said calmly and walked on.

We are witnessing the consignment of memory to oblivion. The language spoken, read and written by Jews in the towns and cities of Lithuania has been destroyed. The Nazi occupation exterminated 95% of Yiddish speakers, the bearers of a culture that had suddenly blossomed so brightly in the 1920s and 30s.

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Posted in Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another Kind of Final Solution?

Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

Posted on 12 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | YITZHAK ARAD | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Everybody makes mistakes, even august, storied and splendid international organizations. As in personal affairs, so in conference rooms, the secret is in the ability to say so and make a change, remembering the adage attributed to Mark Twain, along the lines of it being much easier to fool a person than to get them to admit they have been fooled.

The Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany) has just allowed its vaunted name and logo to appear on the publicity for events in Palanga and Plunge, Lithuania organized by one of the major engines of East European Holocaust revisionism. That entity is the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes,” which local diplomats have long dubbed for short “the Red-Brown Commission” starting in 2008 when the Commission reacted with utter silence to prosecutors’ launching of absurd and cruel kangaroo pretrial war crimes investigations into two of Vilnius’s most beloved Holocaust survivors, Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024). Please skim through the saga.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum Deletes Yiddish from all Three Vilnius Addresses

Posted on 27 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | LITVAK ISSUES | MUSEUMS

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by Dovid Katz

 

Beloved multilingual signs proudly including Yiddish from Pylimo 4A, Pamenkalnio 12, and Naugarduko 10 are all gone. Their replacements have not a word of Yiddish text. Why this decision just now, in the 2020s, to eliminate Yiddish from state institutions that were so proud to include right-on-the-street Yiddish for close to forty years? Just now, when the government is making such nice hay from the 100th anniversary Yivo celebrations. Is what the Vilna Yivo stood for taken seriously?

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From the days of its majestic late 1980s independence struggle onward, Lithuanian state policy has for forty years now had the literally “one in the world” grace of centering the Yiddish language in the Jewish culture component of its remembrance and city signage policies and vision. The city once known as a symbolic capital of Yiddish language and scholarship would preserve the memory of that heritage with national and municipal pride. Plaques on the former addresses of master scholars Zalmen Reyzen and Max Weinreich, of poets Meyshe Kulbak and Avrom Sutzkever all have prominent Yiddish text. Vilna Ghetto signage has Yiddish. Yiddish is one of the four languages adorning the Tsemakh Shabad sculpture by the late Romas Kvintas.

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Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum Deletes Yiddish from all Three Vilnius Addresses

The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

Posted on 24 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION  |  WOMEN’S ISSUES | UKRAINE | LITHUANIA

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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

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The author’s recent mission to Ukraine ended with gifting to Ukraine’s defenders the car she drove from Vilnius.

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When discussing feminism in Lithuania, I like to talk about women “volunteers” in part because I am one of them. Volunteers are people who give of their time and wherewithal to actually deliver aid to Ukraine. Their activities are very dangerous, because they often go to hot spots. On December 31, 2024, one volunteer was seriously injured when a package left on the street of a front-line town exploded in his hand. In June 2024, another volunteer lost a leg after coming under fire in Pokrovsk. You might think that this activity would discourage women, but there are a lot of them among the volunteers. These are emancipated, courageous women who go to the most dangerous zones, helping to transport cars and necessary equipment to the front.

I also go on such missions, because I believe that it is the duty of a true anti-fascist to fight this evil with all my might. The Putin regime’s fascism must be defeated in Ukraine so that it does not come to our homes here in Lithuania.

When traveling to the front line, in the Donetsk region, you are greeted not only by checkpoints, but also by minefields that stretch along the road you are driving on. Signs everywhere warn of mines. You see the destroyed cities and everything that the ideology of the “Russian Federation world” brings. And you understand that you are doing what you must, that all the achievements of feminism are worth only to the extent that you can help in dealing with this modern-day incarnation of fascism.

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Posted in Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Ukraine, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Women's Rights | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

High Ranking Lithuanian Holocaust Obfuscator Laurynas Kasčiūnas

Posted on 17 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | NOREIKA SAGA | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | GENOCIDE CENTER

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OPINION

by Andrius Kulikauskas  (Eičiūnai, Alytus district, Lithuania)

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On February 9, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, member of Lithuania’s Parliament (Seimas) since 2016, was elected chairman of the Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats, upon receiving 13,488 votes, 78% of the vote. He replaced Gabrielius Landsbergis, who resigned after their party’s poor performance in the 2024 elections to Seimas, where it was voted out of power, dropping from 50 seats to 28.

Upon election, Kasčiūnas vowed, “We will strive to be a party worthy of the trust of all of Lithuania’s people. We will bring together the brightest minds for the strategic interests of the state.” One litmus test he will face is whether he will admit he has been morally wrong in his deplorable defense of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika.

Born in 1982, now 43 years old, Kasčiūnas ventured into politics through the extremist, anti-Israel Lithuanian National Democratic Party, which accused Jews of world domination. In 1999 he was the chairman of the Young Lithuanian National Democrats, and from there rose to become deputy to Mindaugas Murza, the party’s notorious neo-Nazi leader. In 2003, Kasčiūnas worked, unsuccessfully, through “Už nepriklausomą Lietuvą” to keep Lithuania out of the European Union. Subsequently, he has characterized this all as the mistakes of his youthful enthusiasm.

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Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on High Ranking Lithuanian Holocaust Obfuscator Laurynas Kasčiūnas

Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism

Posted on 9 February 2025 by Defending History

 OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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Today’s announcement that Lithuanian prime minister Gintautas Paluckas has set up a Working Group to study the rise in antisemitism is welcomed by all people of good faith. He has assembled a group of highly accomplished public figures, led by the PM’s advisor Alexander Radchenko, who will report to the PM by 1 June 2025 on a “plan of action for combating antisemitism, xenophobia, and other forms of incitement to discord; and, on the encouragement of Jewish life”. Among the Working Group’s members are deputy minister of internal affairs Gintaras Aliksandravičius; director of the Department of National Minorities Dainius Babilas; Head of the Culture Department of the Utena District Municipality Jūratė Brasiūnienė; member of the Vilnius City Council Vygintas Gasparavičius; chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky; head of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Martynas Lukoševičius; deputy minister of Education, Science and Sports Jonas Petkevičius. Congratulations and godspeed to them and their colleagues.

The proximate event — inclusion of an openly antisemitic led party in the national governing coalition — that led to the Working Group’s formation needs no repetitive recital here. For over a decade and a half, Defending History prides itself on covering the ground that others may overlook (rather than repeat what is being done out there). Nevertheless, one generic comment is perhaps apropos: To be a working group, not a PR diversion, the new entity will frankly need to comment on its own convenor’s, the prime minister’s, decision to lead a coalition government that includes an antisemitic party, the first time this has happened in any Baltic country’s post-soviet history. Or is the working group precluded from commenting on a rise in antisemitism precipitated by the prime minister’s indefensible decision that has legitimized bigtime what had been marginal claptrap? That would render it akin to the proverbial case of beating the dickens out of a person, causing huge bodily and mental harm, and then offering for the cyberworld of the  contemporary press release, a little band-aid in a pristine plastic packet.

In the usual constructive spirit of providing timely input in the public space, the Defending History community offers its proverbial two cents in the form of — three points.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism

Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva

Posted on 6 February 2025 by Defending History

FILM | ARTS | OPINION | SHEDUVA | SAULIUS BERŽINIS

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FILM REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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The history of Lithuania during the Second World War is complex and tragic. After short-lived continued independence in 1939-1940, following the playing out of the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the USSR effectively took over Lithuania in June 1940 and established a harsh regime. Tens of thousands of inhabitants were then deported to Siberia, with big blocks of victims just one week prior to Germany’s June 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazi invaders and high numbers of local collaborators slaughtered 96.4% of the Jewish population of the country, over 200,000 people, one of the highest rates of the genocide of the Jews in Holocaust-era Europe. In 1944, the USSR liberated the country from the Germans, and then went on to occupy it until its renewed independence in 1990. It has since rapidly evolved into a successful EU and NATO state.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arts, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva