Defending History

In our country, there has for decades now been a ceaseless series of battles in the mass media, social media and other nooks and crannies of the public space.

A new surge has emerged. The subject of the various high-voltage disputes? The attitude of members of society, and particularly the cultural elite and the authorities to the collaboration of the Lithuanian population with the two adversarial branches of “socialism”: the so-called workers’ and peasants’ variety (Communist) and national socialism (Nazism). During the year before the entry of Nazi troops onto the territory of the Lithuanian Soviet republic in June of 1941, and after World War II ended here in July 1944, many local people cooperated with the Soviets. The cooperation of an overwhelming part of the country’s population with the Soviet occupational authorities became especially enthusiastic and active during the long, peaceful postwar period. To a certain extent, it was natural because one always wants to live, and not just to survive, but also to find oneself, to be able to create something. However, by the sharpest of contrasts, during the Nazi occupation,considerable numbers became not just willing and active accomplices of the “general” Nazi policies pursued by the occupiers, but also initiators and enthusiasts of repressions and mass murder directed against Jews and, selectively, against members of other sections of the civilian population.

Some naively believed that Hitler’s invasion would help the nation break free of the “friendly” embrace of the USSR and restore independence. Others were guided by more prosaic considerations, such as robbing and killing their neighbors and fellow citizens. Others still did not disdain either and combined the useful with the pleasing. And it never occurred to the many elites leading these activities that killing a peaceful unarmed people in their own country, a whole people declared an enemy by the nationalist propaganda, cannot bring a nation the good luck it years for, even if you somehow assume that they really all were your enemies.

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Chona Leibovih (Leibovicius), Holocaust in Lihtuania, Jonas Noreika | Comments Off

Alexandra Kudukis Interviews Dovid Katz in The Lithuania Tribune

Posted on 13 May 2019 by Defending History

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VILNIUS—The following interview of DH editor Dovid Katz by Alexandra Kudukis appeared in the Lithuania Tribune today.

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Alexandra Kudukis: Professor Katz, you shared that although you were not surprised by the decision, you believed the verdict only serves to divide and hold Lithuania as a culture and people back. Could you please expound on that thought?

My view, consolidated after twenty years of choosing to live in beautiful Vilnius, is that the Lithuanian people by and large have absolutely no interest in there being state-sponsored monuments to Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators or street names glorifying them. This is a kind of self-destructive obsession of a very small but very powerful elite that deals with “history” in government, government-sponsored research and public affairs, agencies and history departments.

Here, in this most delightfully democratic of countries, the one exception is freedom to disagree about history! My dear friend Evaldas Balčiūnas, for example, did the country a huge service by publishing a series of articles, starting in 2012, in both Lithuanian and English, on the topic of “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” He lost his job and career, and was lugged into court for useless kangaroo hearings for years (for the saga in English, please see his section in Defending History, here: (please scroll down to May 2014). In fact, virtually all who have spoken up on these issues have seen our jobs come to a rapid end (see a summary here).

CONTINUE READING

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged Alexandra Kudukis, Dovid Katz, Lithuanian Jewish issues | Comments Off

More Evidence: Did Adolfas Ramanauskas’s Lead a Hitlerist Militia in the Early Days of the Lithuanian Holocaust?

Posted on 13 May 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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Five years ago, I wrote about the alleged connections of Adolfas Ramanauskas to the persecution of Jews in Druskininkai. Following publication of the Lithuanian version, the English version appeared here in Defending History in 2014. The connections are based in the first instance on Ramanauskas’s own memoirs, published in post-Soviet independent Lithuania, where he boasts that he served as leader of “the rebels’ squad” during the precise days and weeks of June and July 1941 when these “rebels” of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) were in fact unleashing humiliation, plunder, violence and indeed murder against Jewish neighbors (the Soviet army was escaping Hitler’s invasion, not these white-armbanded LAFers). Following upon Ramanauskas’s own memoir and boast came research into the actual police records of the summer of 1941, as well as the postwar Soviet war crimes trials’ transcripts.

When writing that first article in 2014, my goal was not to find or prove something directly compromising. I was simply disturbed by the obvious collision of this heroic myth and its historical circumstances. It was part of my series of articles in Defending History, starting in 2012, that was launched by my essay “Why does the State Commemorate Murderers?”.

LATEST MEDIA:

Algemeiner; BBC; Independent; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Telegraph.

RAMANAUSKAS: A FIVE YEAR SAGA

But then, in late 2017, the Seimas (parliament) of the Republic of Lithuania declared 2018 to be the Year of Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas. Indignant at the uncritical worship, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s department of East European affairs, brought a copy of my article to the members of the Seimas and was condemned without them even attempting to read it. During that period, I published a second, follow-up article focused on the moral issues.

Successful resistance to the plans of the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania to erect a monument to Ramanauskas in his native city of New Britain, Conn., were enabled exactly by the facts mentioned in the 2014 piece (that saga can be followed in Defending History). One year ago, the City Council of New Britain “just said No.”

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Evaldas Balčiūnas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas Vanagas, Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania | Comments Off

Latest on State Honors for Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika

Posted on 4 May 2019 by Defending History

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OUR TAKE ON THE LATEST IN THE 7 YEAR OLD NOREIKA SAGA

VILNIUS—LRT state television reported that an American religious Jewish school would held a polite protest outside the Lithuanian consulate in New York on Yom Hashoah, 2 May, to protest the Lithuanian government’s continued state-sponsored glorification of Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika and others. The protest was carried out by students of the Rambam Mesivta High School, under the guidance of its renowned principal, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman. See Defending History’s report on the event.

Lithuanian Public Television’s Special Investigation of the controversy over Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika was supposed to air on Thursday May 2 at 7:30 PM (19:30), including an interview with Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas. But the program did not air. Instead, the LRT website posted an “Open Letter Regarding the Increase of Tension in Society” signed by four leaders of Lithuanian (ultra)nationalist organizations. The letter specifically attacks Chicago resident Silvia Foti, Noreika’s granddaughter, California resident Grant Gochin, and other critics of the glorification of Holocaust collaborators, while claiming that Noreika, Škirpa, Brazaitis, Krikštaponis and Kraujelis are national heroes. LRT.lt added a remark clarifying that, according to the Genocide Center, Krikštaponis participated in the mass murder of Jews. The article claims that criticism of glorification of Holocaust collaborators is the work of “Moscow.”

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, History, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ilya Lempertas, ISrael Lempertas, Jonas Noreika, Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Prague Declaration (2008), Rambam School, Sivia Foti, Vytautas Landsbergis, Yivo and Lithuania | Comments Off

Hundreds of Rambam Mesivta High School Protest Peacefully at New York’s Lithuanian Consulate

Posted on 3 May 2019 by Defending History

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NEW YORK CITY—Hundreds of Jewish high school students from the New York area, pupils at Rambam Mesivta High School, demonstrated peacefully and with dignity outside the Lithuanian Consulate in New York City yesterday, led by their renowned principal, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman. The day was Yom Hashoah, a day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust, and the occasion was the Lithuanian government’s continued glorification of Jonas Noreika, a major Holocaust collaborator who participated in the destruction of thousands of the country’s citizens in 1941. The Noreika debate is now seven years old, and can be followed chronologically in Defending History (see most recent update).

Students chanted, “Your hero is a Nazi!”

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Events, Human Rights, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, United States | Comments Off

European Foundation for Human Rights Protests this Weekend’s EU-Financed Musical Jamboree in Heart of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 26 April 2019 by Defending History

PDF OF NEW STATEMENT

AVAILABLE INLINE BELOW

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As addendum to EFHR’s case filed; international opposition; petition reaching 46,000 mark

Recent coverage in the Algemeiner Journal; English Delfi.lt (Lithuania Tribune); Jerusalem Post;

INCREDIBLY, M. K. ČIURLIONIS HOUSE & MUSEUM ARE PARTNERING

Protest letter from Julius Norwilla, chairman of the Vilnius Committee for Preservation of Piramont (Snipiskes) Cemetery to the Director of the Čiurlionis House and Museum

MORE IN DEFENDING HISTORY

UPDATE: Julius Norwilla invites colleagues to monitoring team that will meet on Sunday 28 April at midday sharp at the monument to the cemetery on Olimpiečių St. in front of the dilapidated Soviet “Sports Palace”

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Meanwhile in London, a Serious Incident Report has been filed with the UK’s national Charity Commission requesting an investigation of the role of the CPJCE in the destruction of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery.

Unique study in body language: “blockbuster video” of London CPJCE staff allegedly morally selling other people’s graves against the rulings of all the rabbis of Vilnius and of the planet. In fact, when the chief rabbi of Lithuania spoke up in 2015, he was fired for expressing his views. Views of Rabbi S.J. Feffer (leading Litvak religious authority in the country) and Rabbi S.B. Krinsky (official rabbi of the synagogue / Chabad Lithuania).

The Wikileaks cable that just will not go away (jump to end of point 8)

Ruta Bloshtein’s petition approaches 46,000

Overviews by Shnayer Leiman, Juris Kaža, Michael Maass, Dovid Katz, and Vilna-born Holocaust survivor Pinchos Fridberg; Statements by elected head of Vilnius Jewish Community Simon Gurevich

SEE MORE

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PDF of European Foundation for Human Rights statement. Please use handles in upper left had corner to turn pages.

EFHR-Letter-Creative-Europe_2019.04.25

Posted in News & Views | Comments Off

Dr. Kulikauskas to Speak on Noreika Issue at Vilnius Conference on Interdisciplinary Interaction

Posted on 24 April 2019 by Defending History

THE NOREIKA SAGA | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | GENOCIDE CENTER | DOUBLE GENOCIDE POLICIES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS

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VILNIUS—On Friday, April 26, 18:00-18:20, Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, curator of the Captain Jonas Noreika Museum, Archive and Forum, will give the final talk at the conference “The Territories of Interaction of Aesthetics, Art Philosophy and Art History: Intercultural Fields of the Functions of Representation”, organized by Prof. Antanas Andrijauskas at the Lithuanian Cultural Studies Institute, at Saltoniškių St. 58, Vilnius.

Dr. Kulikauskas will be speaking in Lithuanian on “How to Forego, Through Dialogue, Monumental Images of Those Who Voiced the Will of the Lithuanian Nation in 1941 But Committed Crimes Against Humanity”.

His talk will be followed by an hour of open dialogue on two questions:

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Collaborators Glorified, Events, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Lithuanian Cultural Studies Institute | Comments Off

American Author Silvia Foti Launches Petition Asking Lithuanian Gov. to Abandon State Honors for her Grandfather, Collaborator J. Noreika

Posted on 24 April 2019 by Defending History

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

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VILNIUS—Author Silvia Foti, the American granddaughter of the notorious Lithuanian Holocaust collaborator, Jonas Noreika, has been described as “exceptionally courageous” for publicly telling the truth about her grandfather, whom far-right elements in the Lithuanian government and its “history fixing agencies” continue to revere with street names, plaques and state-contrived history. That rewriting of history has a “higher purpose” — to downgrade the Holocaust and beyond whitewashing, to recast the local perpetrators as “heroes” (because they were “anti-Soviet,” a description that could match close to 100% of the East European Holocaust murderers). He is only one of a series of collaborators in the destruction of around 96% of Lithuanian Jewry (among the highest proportions in Holocaust-era Europe) who are regarded as “national heroes” in tandem with the vast, and lavishly state-financed, campaign to rewrite World War II as “two equal genocides,” thereby, according to some, seeking to write the Holocaust out of history as unique event here — without denying a single death.

This week, Ms. Foti launched an international petition boldly entitled “Remove all honors awarded to my grandfather Jonas Noreika.” In some ways, it is a follow-up to an earlier petition, launched some years ago by London-based Monica Lowenberg.

TO SIGN THE PETITION

Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged Andrius Kulikauskas, Grant Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Monica Lowenberg, Rachel Kostanian, Silvia Foti | Comments Off

Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to be Shamed Again This Weekend as Soviet Dump is Glorified

Posted on 23 April 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE | ADMAS KODESH

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VILNIUS—In a shock both to human rights activists here and the small but vibrant Jewish community, the “Open House Vilnius” project of the NGO “Architektūros fondas”, in partnership with M. K. Čiurlionis House and Museum is organizing a major event this coming weekend to feature an “audio-visual installation by the composer Vytautas Paukštelis”. The event is being sponsored by European Union taxpayer euros via the EU’s “Creative Europe and European Music Paths” program.

“The Ghosts of Vilna Will Not be Silenced” (by Vulovak for DefendingHistory)

The problem? It is being staged right smack in the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish at Piramónt (in today’s Šnipiškės district, Shnípeshok in Yiddish). In fact, the staging could not be some kind of clerical error resulting from lack of being informed. For years now, there has been an international (and local!) movement beseeching the Lithuanian government and its state-owned Turto bankas, and the City of Vilnius, to move the convention center project away from the old Jewish cemetery, so that it might be lovingly restored, as, for example, per the Frankfurt model, and become an international site that will attract people from around the world, instead of a mark of racism and antisemitism in the city that was once the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” and even today uses that phrase for marketing and PR.

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), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged human rights in Lithuania, Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Old Vilna (Vilnius) Jewish cemetery | Comments Off

How I Feel about Street Names & Public Plaques for Alleged Holocaust Collaborators

Posted on 18 April 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

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by Roza Bieliauskienė
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The twentieth century was drenched in upheavals, blood and tears. New states were founded, others were destroyed and above all, it cost so many people a huge price: to suffer broken lives and fates or to be senselessly killed. If not for the world wars, how much more would humankind have reached in science, art, literature, technology, economy and more.

Over seventy years have passed since the end of the Holocaust, and, as in the legend of Till Eulenspiegel the ashes of our people‘s annihilation during the Holocaust is still in our hearts. We do not forget them, every year we come to Ponár (Paneriai), to the fortresses of Kaunas. In my case, also to the Pivonijos forest where in the period from July to September of 1941 so many of my relatives, all simple peaceful civilians, perished, they of the Reitenbort and Kahan families. We also visit other places of mass killings.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roza Bieliauskienė, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged glorification of Holocauts collaborators, Holocaust in Lithuania, honors for Holocaust collaborators, Jonas Noreika, Lithuania, Paneriai (Ponar), Pivonijos forest, Roza Bieliauskiene | Comments Off

A Tale of Two Cities? New Britain (Connecticut) and Chicago (Illinois)

Posted on 15 April 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | USA

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VILNIUS—Will Chicago, Illinois, allow a planned May 4th unveiling of a sculpture glorifying alleged Holocaust collaborator Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas) to proceed in its world-famous Freedom Park without due process for Holocaust victims, survivors, and their spokespeople? Without a public discussion including the many in Lithuania who oppose glorifying Hitlerist collaborators? The English news release for the project casually omits the reference to the Holocaust present in the original BNS Lithuanian report. That reference is of course the controversy that led New Britain, Connecticut to veto a Ramanauskas monument last year. Do the people of Chicago know they would be getting a New Britain reject, and most importantly, why it was rejected by the New England town after many months of deliberation?

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, United States | Tagged Adolfas Ramanauskas Vanagas, Chicago, Connecticut, Efraim Zuroff (Wiesenthal Center), Freedom Park, Holocaust collaborators Glorified, Holocaust Collaborators Honored, New Britain | Comments Off

European Foundation for Human Rights Takes Desecration of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to Court

Posted on 15 April 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE | ADMAS KODESH

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VILNIUS—The European Foundation for Human Rights has today filed a lawsuit with the District Court of Vilnius City. The following is the full text of a press release issued by the group this morning, which appears on its website:

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) | Tagged Piramont Jewish cemetery, Ruta Bloshtein, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius Jewish cemetery | Comments Off

English Original of LRT’s Television Interview with Dovid Katz Now Online

Posted on 14 April 2019 by Defending History

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EDITOR’S NOTE: LRT’s television interview with DH editor Dovid Katz, filmed in late November 2018, was broadcast on Lithuanian television on 14 February with Lithuanian voice-over. The following is the interview in the original English, courtesy of LRT.

Posted in Dovid Katz, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Comments Off

Vilnius Plaque Glorifying Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika is Smashed by Stanislovas Tomas, Maverick Candidate for European Parliament

Posted on 8 April 2019 by Defending History

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All on film, streamed live Monday morning 8 April 2019, from candidate’s bilingual statements through to his calling the police and their eventual arrival to make the arrest

VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

(plaque smashing at 14:30; English segments at 04:10; 22:40)

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UPDATE OF 18 APRIL 2019: PLAQUE RESTORED BY MUNICIPALITY

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Film, Ins and Outs of the Central Vilnius Noreika Plaque Glorifying a Brutal Holocaust Collaborator, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Comments Off

Court Steps Aside, Vilnius Genocide Center ‘Shows its True Face’

Posted on 4 April 2019 by Defending History

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

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by Andrius Kulikauskas

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On March 27, 2019, the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court ruled against Grant Gochin as to his complaint against the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center. He will have to pay the Center’s legal fees. The Genocide Center proceeded to triumphantly depict Jonas Noreika as a flawless hero, yet in places the contrary view is breaking through the one-sided, subservient reporting by most of the Lithuanian press.

The essence of Grant Gochin’s complaint was that the Center had been unobjective, incomplete, and abused its power in replying to his “Query Regarding Jonas Noreika’s Criminal Gang” and in refusing to change its certificate about Jonas Noreika. Holocaust perpetrator Captain Jonas Noreika is celebrated in Lithuania with honors, statues, plaques, and street names.

The Court ruled that “…the Court cannot take on the Center’s prescribed functions nor its powers…”

The Center’s main argument had been that Gochin had no material interest in the certificate about Jonas Noreika. This was most callous, given that Gochin counts 100 relatives as victims of the Holocaust, with quite a number of them in Šiauliai District, where Jonas Noreika was District Chief. Government agencies refer to the certificate as the basis for honoring Noreika.

DH’s eyewitness report with links to (scant) media coverage

Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off

Dovid Katz Interviewed by Stanislovas Tomas in Vilnius

Posted on 1 April 2019 by Defending History

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DH EDITOR’S NOTE: While the interview per se was broadcast fairly and honestly, Jazz TV provided a wholly incorrect title in the version posted online. At no point did Dovid Katz assert that his 2010 discontinuation at Vilnius University was due to him saying that the anti-Nazi Soviet war effort between 1941 and 1945 saved many Jews during the Holocaust (which it did). Instead it was because of three articles in 2009 and 2010 (in the Jewish Chronicle (London), the Irish Times (Dublin) and the online Guardian which expressed disagreement with the 2008 Prague Declaration, the “Double Genocide” theory and particularly with Lithuanian state prosecutors who initiated campaigns of defamation against Holocaust survivors (and anti-Nazi partisan heroes) Yitzhak Arad, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Rachel Margolis and others. Professor Katz believes his views to be in the very best interests of Lithuania and its citizens. among whom he has chosen to live for the past twenty years.

[Update of 8 April: Following the smashing of the Noreika plaque one week after the interview, our report and “unequivocal condemnation” of all violence against property appeared in Defending History.]

[Update of 9 August: Amidst an antisemitic demonstration, a new and “better” Noreika plaque is put up.]

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Full Lithuanian Translation of the Interview

Pilnas video interviu su prof. Dovydu Kacu (Vilnius, 2019 m. balandžio 1 d.) vertimas į lietuvių kalbą

Posted in Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Comments Off

Eyewitness Report: Reading of Vilnius Court’s Verdict on State Adulation for Local Holocaust Collaborator

Posted on 27 March 2019 by Defending History

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‘Sad Day for Lithuania, and for Honest Holocaust Commemoration in Years Ahead’

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VILNIUS—At 1 PM on Wed. March 27th, a Vilnius Administrative Court judge read out the court’s ruling dismissing the query of US resident Grant Gochin over Lithuania’s state glorification of Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika, active during the Holocaust in the region where Gochin lost around 100 relatives. The court said Mr. Gochin had no material interest, ruled that the state-sponsored Genocide Center had answered his query completely, without bias, and without abuse of power, in effect further enshrining in law an EU/NATO state’s glorification of Holocaust collaborators and perpetrato

rs via the financing of ultranationalist and far-right history centers and departments determined to preserve the national hero status of Holocaust collaborators. Whenever government or municipal officials are asked about the numerous street names and plaques honoring collaborators, the invariable answer is that it is all in fact a matter for the experts at the Genocide Center.

Does the ruling reflect a new East European Holocaust sensibility that holds that participation in the destruction of a country’s Jewish citizens during the Holocaust was some minute detail that must not interfere with making heroes out of the local perpetrators and collaborators?

Mr. Gochin’s academic specialist, Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas was on hand along with attorney Rokas Rudzinskas. Of the Genocide Center’s staff, only historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys turned up, sitting nervously in the small gallery surrounded in part by first and second generation Holocaust survivors who turned out to hear the verdict that the Western embassies, human rights organization and official (state-sponsored) Jewish community thought not worth sending an official representative to hear. By contrast the local Vilnius Jewish Community had two observers on hand.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Comments Off

Court will Read Out Noreika Verdict Wednesday 27th at 1 PM in Historic Holocaust History Trial

Posted on 25 March 2019 by Defending History

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VILNIUS—On March 27, Wednesday, at 1 PM here in Vilnius, the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court will be reading its verdict on the case filed by California resident Grant Gochin calling on the state-sponsored Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center, widely known as the Genocide Center, to revise its evaluation of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika as a hero who is worthy of state honors. Hundreds of documents have been produced demonstrating beyond all doubt his participation in the Lithuanian Holocaust (see sample document). One of the case’s sensations was the powerful and historic statement condemning Noreik’a crimes produced by his granddaughter, the American educator and author Silvia Foti.

The public and the press are welcome to attend the conclusion of this historic trial at Žygimantų Street 2 in central Vilnius.

BACKGROUND

DH’s take. Report on 15 Jan. hearing. Report on 5 March hearing. Evaldas Balčiūnas’s 2012 article that brought Noreika to the attention of the English speaking world. Balčiūnas’s DH section.

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Events, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged Genocide Center Vilnius, Grant Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonas Noreika, Vilnius Holocaust trial | Comments Off

A Lithuanian Jewish Citizen on Why Jewish Life is Divided into “Before” vs. “After” 19 April 2017

Posted on 25 March 2019 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY LIFE

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by Arkady Kurliandchik

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Arkady Kurliandchik

On the 19th of April 2017, an event transpired that seems to have divided, from the viewpoint of time, our life as Jewish citizens of Lithuania. We were left with two new categories: before and after. Before and after the day when our democratic community’s leadership, in the middle of a community election campaign, changed the rules to disenfranchise the living three thousand or so Jews in the country in favor of a new electoral system based on the votes of the current chairwoman’s own board that would from now on mean that “the official” Jewish community represents not the Jewish people of Lithuania. It represents the people on that board and their “associations,” whether real or not.

To tell the truth, our Jewish community collectively, and each of us individually felt deeply humiliated with that imperious power-hungry arrogance. This historical action was carried out by a small group of power-hungry plotters who usurped that which had been held with human dignity by our Jewish self-government here. This clique of usurpers, in a single meeting, “changed the election rules” to deprive the Jews of Lithuania of the right to vote on issues related to communal Jewish life. What has happened will go down as a black chapter in the history of Jews in Eastern Europe.

Posted in Arkady Kurliandchik, Free Speech & Democracy, 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, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like? | Tagged Arkady Kurliandschik, Faina Kukliansky, Jews in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius Jewish community | Comments Off

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[LATEST UPDATE]

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A Tale of Three Cities

New Britain. Chicago. Vilnius.

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Other reports in: Algemeiner; BBC; Independent; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Telegraph.

On Ramanauskas’s Holocaust-era role see courageous, pioneering articles of Lithuanian ethicist Evaldas Balčiūnas in 2014, 2017 and his latest that has just appeared.

For years after starting his series of articles “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” Balčiūnas was hounded by prosecutors and police (scroll to May 2014).

RAMANAUSKAS: A FIVE YEAR SAGA. BEYOND THE HISTORY: WHY A MONUMENT TO A PRIME ICON OF TODAY’S NEO-NAZIS IN EASTERN EUROPE?

a major icon for neo-Nazi parades…

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by Chona Leibovich (Leibovičius)

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Alexandra Kudukis: Professor Katz, you shared that although you were not surprised by the decision, you believed the verdict only serves to divide and hold Lithuania as a culture and people back. Could you please expound on that thought?

OPINION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS | POLITICS OF MEMORY

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by Evaldas Balčiūnas

LATEST MEDIA:

Algemeiner; BBC; Independent; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Telegraph.

OUR TAKE ON THE LATEST IN THE 7 YEAR OLD NOREIKA SAGA

As addendum to EFHR’s case filed; international opposition; petition reaching 46,000 mark

Recent coverage in the Algemeiner Journal; English Delfi.lt (Lithuania Tribune); Jerusalem Post;

UPDATE: Julius Norwilla invites colleagues to monitoring team that will meet on Sunday 28 April at midday sharp at the monument to the cemetery on Olimpiečių St. in front of the dilapidated Soviet “Sports Palace”

Meanwhile in London, a Serious Incident Report has been filed with the UK’s national Charity Commission requesting an investigation of the role of the CPJCE in the destruction of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery.

Overviews by Shnayer Leiman, Juris Kaža, Michael Maass, Dovid Katz, and Vilna-born Holocaust survivor Pinchos Fridberg; Statements by elected head of Vilnius Jewish Community Simon Gurevich

THE NOREIKA SAGA | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | GENOCIDE CENTER | DOUBLE GENOCIDE POLICIES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS

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

OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE | ADMAS KODESH

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by Roza Bieliauskienė ◊

OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | USA

OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | USCPAHA | CPJCE | ADMAS KODESH

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All on film, streamed live Monday morning 8 April 2019, from candidate’s bilingual statements through to his calling the police and their eventual arrival to make the arrest

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

by Andrius Kulikauskas

**Scholars & journalists: When you use DH, please cite DH.**

by Roza Bieliauskienė
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