OPINION  |  VILNIUS JEWISH COMMUNITY  |  GERMANY |  THE STOLEN ELECTION SAGA  |  “GOOD WILL” FOUNDATION  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Arkady Kurliandchik

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I am well aware that for a very long time there has been a tradition of awarding long-time office-holders with assorted awards and medals on suitable occasions. There seems to be, moreover, a certain logic to it. If you are totally in charge of something for a long time, then, apparently — you must deserve an award.  Nevertheless, there is much mystery and mystification around the recent award by the German Embassy in Vilnius of the prestigious Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany to the long-time ruler of the ersatz “Lithuanian Jewish Community.” The award cites, inter alia, her “long-term efforts to unite the Lithuanian Jewish Community, including strengthening the organization’s role on the national and international level.” This is so painfully ridiculous to virtually all of the surviving Jewish community of Lithuania precisely because it is the precise opposite of our experience over more than a decade. Except for a tiny handful receiving largesse for servitude, it is hard to find a single Jew in Vilnius who feels comfortable walking into what has become a kind of “Lithuanian agency for Jewish affairs” at the Pylimo 4 headquarters populated by the rich and powerful. Many see here the nepotistic benefits for a tiny number of elite families, without the elementary transparency of full and timely accounting online for all of the millions being spent from the state-funding, which is actually funding that derives, via restitution, from pilfered prewar Jewish community assets.

Why would the German Embassy not do its minimal due diligence? Enhancing it further by connecting it to D-Day adds injury to insult.

First, almost all the Jews were kicked out of the community administration, and those who did not care whether they were Jews, Antarticans or Martians took their place (as long as they had high government or other elite connections, or were regarded as suitably spineless and subservient). The entire community turned into a weird kind of publicly-funded yet privately-run enterprise with an ironclad one-person dictatorship. It seems to many that the awardee is also the permanent co-chair of the “Good Will Foundation” that decides on disbursement of tens of millions of euros. It also seems to many that it is the same person who continues to be the top lawyer loyal to wealthy foreign clients seeking EU passports. All this might even be a conflict of interest situation that the German Embassy would, I imagine, itself not honor with an award in its own organization.

Second, through a series off abject deceptions (financed by the selfsame “Good Will Foundation” whose assets derive from our annihilated communities), the long-term democratic structure of the community was dismantled and the voting power of individual Jewish citizens nullified, right in the middle of the 2017 elections, only to be replaced by “associations” led by cronies, many of whom themselves benefited from largesse. Indeed, one of them, a little involved himself in those 2017 elections, made his way all the way from Brussels to appear at the German Embassy ceremony to give a speech of abject adulation.

The Jews of Lithuania were in one fell swoop disenfranchised and denigrated en masse in a tale so unusual that it was reported internationally by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Jews can no longer vote for the leaders of “their” community. The ruler is forever reelected by the  “associations” determined by the chairperson who is also the co-chair of the foundation allocating the funds, besides a top flight law practice. So, which of these practices does the German Embassy admire most?

“But why would the German Embassy want to honor the destroyer of our community, its democracy, and its ethos, with a bizarre award for ‘uniting’ and ‘strengthening’ the community? It is the precise opposite.

—Arkady Kurliandchik, member of the Vilnius Jewish Community

Indeed, our democracy was so thorough destroyed, with the help of some of the fanciest lawyers in the land that no other chairperson could ever be elected. At the time, the regional Jewish communities announced a vote of No Confidence in the chairperson, but she was and is very little interested in other opinions. And when the Vilnius community began to try to restore the democratic principles that had existed before, the “Lithuanian Jewish Community” chairperson solved the problem in an elementary way: she created a fake parallel Vilnius Jewish Community with a different name, which receives excellent funding — a flagrant wasting of precious funding —despite its lack of living members. That is the incredible extent to which the LJC now goes to prevent a bona fide Jewish community from even existing, let alone thriving, in our beloved Vilnius.

The Cross of the Order of Merit awarded on D-Day 2024 to chairperson of the “Jewish Community of Lithuania” Faina Kukliansky, who is also non-rotating co-chair of the “Good Will Foundation” and a leading attorney for foreigners seeking EU citizenship. Click on image for link to LJC’s official report of the event.

The genuine Vilnius community, representing the overwhelming majority of the remaining two thousand or so Jews in Vilnius,  has not received a solitary penny for some ten years now, despite the fact that it is the largest in Lithuania. How on earth can the German Embassy be so insensitive as to not even consult with the last Jewish community in Vilnius representing the city’s loving Jews (nearly all descended from Holocaust survivors, including flight survivors) before giving its almighty cross to the usurper of the Jewish mantel? The Embassy has, it seems, been warned about these Vilnius pitfalls before.

As for the vast sums of money going into propping up the dictatorial democracy-destroying regime of Lithuania’s remnant and struggling real Jewish community, it is money that reeks of blood, the blood that sank into the 230 mass murder sites scattered over all of our country.

Every honest minority community is the home of friendly and respectful discussions and debate, open to people of diverse views, be it about the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery or the legitimacy of pushing out long serving professionals to install relatives or lackeys. In the tragically usurped “Lithuanian Jewish Community” there are only goodies for the obedient, and only deprecation, threats and retaliation against any who dare have another opinion.

This year, after years of pressure from several foreign members of the “Good Will Foundation”  boards, from America and Israel, who have privately conceded their utter shame at what is being done using their names and board membership as a shield, a modest grant was finally allocated to the Vilnius Jewish Community. But when it came time for the allocation, it was abruptly cancelled with an “explanation” that was more insult than reason. In other words, the Board members are being made into fools, whose input means nothing. Will they continue to remain publicly silent as long as they get their lavish junkets to “meetings” and banquets and fancy photo-ops?

As for “strengthening the organization’s role on the national and international level”:

Sure, the international status of an organization that can spend, over the years, tens of millions at the whim of two non-rotating chairpersons of the “Good Will Foundation” (the selfsame chairwoman in yet another conflict of interest, and her partner from the American Jewish Committee who underpins every community-destroying act).

What about “at the national level”? No Jew in Lithuania has done more to turn Lithuanian society against Jews than the chairwoman whose notorious interview contained the cursed words “Jews hate Lithuanians even more than Lithuanians hate Jews.” For all of us, who enjoy superb relations, every day and every hour, with our Lithuanian friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives, these devastating words from a master purveyor of hate say it all. Thankfully, a prominent member of our community responded in an essay to the offending interview.

I just don’t get it. How can a person who has been destroying this community for decades strengthen the role of the community?

It would appear that the German Embassy in Vilnius should initiate a review of its procedures for designating awardees of its prestigious crosses.

The good news is that the problem seems to be contained, limited to a single embassy. In a superb move that brought cheer and comfort to supporters of Holocaust truth telling everywhere, above all to the remaining Jews of Lithuania, the German government in 2019 awarded the Presidential Order of Merit to our community’s singularly courageous Rachel Kostanian, who for decades built and defended the Green House (officially now the Holocaust section of the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History), Lithuania’s bastion of historical truth-telling about the Holocaust. We salute with all our hearts the government of Germany for honoring one of our community’s true heroes. Ah, but that award was not even mentioned, it seems, on the pages of the website of the state-sponsored official “Lithuanian Jewish Community”…