Welcome! Please come and visit DefendingHistory.com. Recent reports here. Or, review our 18 year history history by scrolling to the end of our dated posts and work your way up. Our 2026-2027 cultural projects are listed below.
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1 Preserving Eastern Europe’s last Jewish anti-Nazi resistance fort in the forest:
The German Army’s 45th Brigade comes to Lithuania as part of NATO, and ends up right next door to the rapidly sinking remnants of East Europe’s last Jewish anti-Nazi Jewish partisan fort in the forest. Will Germany publicly show respect to this last authentic relic of Jewish resistance? Cherish, preserve, protect, restore it? Take advantage of the magnificent opportunity for education for thousands of soldiers destined for “next door to the Jewish fort in the forest” that late Jewish partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024) showed to thousands of visitors? Or will their arrival accelerate the fort’s disappearance as they “clean old Jewish cemeteries” elsewhere in elaborate PR stunts (with rabbis flown in from Berlin to sidetrack Vilnius’s rabbis) to fix this new “Jewish problem”? Fania’s last wish and legacy. Video of Fania showing us the fort in 2007. Updates to spring 2026. Defending History’s section on the fort. Note: The problem is not Germany’s “wishes in principle” but the failure to politely stand up to far-right ultranationalist Lithuanian state “history agencies” that oppose the Jewish partisan fort’s survival on the face of Lithuania. Maritta Tkalec breaks the taboo on covering the issue in her article in Berliner Zeitung (16 June 2026).
ACTION? Please contact elected officials asking them to bring this up with German embassies and consulates. Please write personally to German embassies and consulates.
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2 Restoring (rather than humiliating) the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery:
Equal human rights include the right of the dead of annihilated minorities to be left in peace: Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery and international appeals to demolish the Soviet ruin on site and lovingly restore the cemetery where many thousands still lie buried. Meanwhile, a debate rages in Lithuanian media as to whether the Soviet ruin should be become a national convention center or a national museum. Defending History has been defending the equal rights of minority cemeteries to rest in peace for over a decade. UPDATES. June 2026 discovery of the 1940 Soviet document declaring confiscation of the cemetery from the Vilnius Jewish Community.
ACTION? Please write to the Committee on Culture of the Seimas (Lithuania’s parliament) at: priim@lrs.lt. We also invite you (if you wish) to send ‘Respecting Cemeteries’ a copy of your letter (at: ruta@kapines.com) so that it can be shared publicly.” More information on the campaign.
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3 Sanitization and glorification of Holocaust perpetrators
The Holocaust broke out in Lithuania on June 23rd 1941, at the hands of the Hitlerist Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF). But ultranationalists in Lithuania want to celebrate this day as a “holiday” (and very sadly, a Vilnius street is still named for the date!). The status of June 23rd and the First Week of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Will authorities really go ahead with a memorial “collegium” in the Seimas in June 2026 (85th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust) that would glorify the killers? Will Vilnius change the name of its “June 23rd Street”? Will shrines to Nazi collaborators be removed nationwide? See DH’s section on glorification of Nazi collaborators.
ACTION? Please write to elected officials to contact Lithuanian embassies worldwide asking for the removal of state-sponsored glorification for Nazi collaborators, and for street names that honor the day of outbreak of the Holocaust, starting with “June 23rd Street” in the country’s beautiful, democratic, multicultural Vilnius.
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4 Preservation of the last Holocaust (and Jewish culture) museum created by survivors themselves
Preservation of the museum contents of The Green House (Pamenkalnio St. 12) intact, whether on site or to be moved to a distinct portion of the new Holocaust museum under construction in the former Ghetto Library building. It is Eastern Europe’s last Jewish museum created entirely by Holocaust survivors themselves and the only public venue in Lithuania to provide an unvarnished, unrevised, unrepaired summary of the history of the Holocaust (not “fixed” by the local “Genocide Center” and its far-right ultranationalist historians). Be sure to visit when in Vilnius, including the room dedicated to prewar Jewish culture and life. Its authenticity is not matched by other Jewish museums in the country.
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5 Combatting the East European history revisionism known as “Double Genocide”
The revised East European ultranationalist history declares Nazi and Soviet crimes to be absolutely equal in principle, in a construct whose corollaries include glorification of perpetrators, vilification of Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, downgrade of the Holocaust, renewal of antisemitic tropes of Jewish responsibilities for communism, and a descent of morally clear public memory into a concerted effort to obfuscate the Holocaust in East European and world history. The newest manifestation is a misguided project for a mix-and-match monument in Brussels that equates Nazi and Soviet crimes in the spirit of the 2008 Prague Declaration (see Defending History’s 2012 response, the Seventy Years Declaration). Latest news on the monument. DH’s report.
ACTION? Please write to the President of the European Parliament to protest the “Echo in Time” monument, and call for a separate monument for the victims of Communism, which is indeed sorely missing in the EU’s capital.
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6 Opposition to East European laws that criminalize opinions that reject Double Genocide revisionism.
Preservation in the EU of Western standards of freedom of speech.
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7 Plans for community machers to erect their own edifice on site of the remnants of the Great Vilna Synagogue
For centuries, there have been in Vilna two most sacred sites from world Jewry’s perspective: the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (no. 3 above), and the site of the Great Synagogue Courtyard (Vilner Shulheyf), particularly the Great Synagogue (Di Greyse Shul; Di Vilner Shot-shul) itself. While there is and would be much international enthusiasm for uncovering and preserving the ruins, with a nearby prayer houselet nearby for pilgrims, or a project to rebuild the Great Synagogue as such, there would, alas be years and decades and centuries of strife, consternation, protest and pain by plans to have a modern architectural project dedicated to a new headquarters for today’s ersatz “stolen election state restitution sponsored ‘official Jewish community'” and its leaders’ activities, even worse if it includes business interests, and secularist anti-traditional forms of Jewish culture. The plans announce: “The Lithuanian Jewish Community Center will be built on the site of the former Vilnius Great Synagogue and will become a center of attraction for Jews, cultural enthusiasts, and gourmets from all over the world” (and the American Embassy in Vilnius has again been persuaded that this is universally acceptable). There is plenty of room for all that on all four sides of the sacred site and in the rest of the city.
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8 Can East European “Holocaust restitution funds” be manipulated to actually diminish modern Jewish life and historic memory?
The tens of millions of euros in the government’s “Restitution” program continues to be in the hands of a small clique that unceremoniously shut down Jewish community democracy in 2017. Zero goes to the democratically structured Vilnius Jewish Community that represents most of the remaining two or so thousand Jews in Lithuania. Zero goes to the rabbis and traditional religious Jewish groups who have given decades to build Jewish life here. The 2025 allocation decisions, presumably in effect in 2026, are published online, though without breakdown of large sums. It is high time for the state to take moral responsibility for the just administration of funds it provides, and to put a stop to the current abuse of these funds to run campaigns of destruction against the local rabbis and the remnant Jewish community. See for example DH’s sections Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky and Rabbi Elchonon Baron and the democratically structured Vilnius Jewish Community’s 2025 protest. See also Defending History’s section on how “Restitution” has over the years damaged Jewish life in Lithuania.
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NOTE: Ordering of the list above is not in order of importance other than dangers of imminent destruction or desecration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, the Jewish Partisans’ Forest Fort, discarding of the Green House contents constructed by Lithuania’s Holocaust survivors, the Great Synagogue project, etc. Weighting of specific issues is in the view of the beholder. For some historic perspective covering recent decades, see our older page on “Seven Solutions,” the original version of which was completed in partnership with the late Dr. Shimon Alperovich (1928-2014) in his final years as elected head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.
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CULTURAL PROJECTS IN PROGRESS…
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The Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA).
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The Yiddish in Ukraine Video Archive (YUVA).
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Online Mini Museum of Old Jewish Vilna.
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Online Mini Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania.
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The Yiddish Cultural Dictionary (YCD).
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Bible translation into Lithuanian Yiddish.
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Yizkor Book for the shtetl Mikháleshik.
- Production of a manual of Ashkenazic Hebrew.