Protected: Ištaisyti sovietinę skriaudą: Šnipiškių žydų kapinių išsaugojimas
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Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF that in 1941 Killed Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust
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.
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 Aleksandras Bosas, Algirdas Brazauskas, Andrius Kulikauskas, Dovid Katz, Glorification of Holocaust collaborators (Lithuania), Holocaust in Lithuania, June 1941 Uprising, Kestutis Girnius, LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), Leonidas Donskis, Linaz Vildziunas, Lithuania's June 1941 uprising, Liudas Truska, Ruta Vanagaite, Silvia Foti, Tomas Venclova, Valentinas Brandisauskas, Vytenis Andriukaitis
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Another Kind of Final Solution?
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.
Posted in Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Abraham Sutzkever, Asya Turgel, Butrimants, Butrimonys, Dalia Epstein, Dalija Epšteinaitė, Dovid Umru, Jewish State Museum of Lithuania, Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews, Odile Suganas, Rozalia Shabad-Gawronska, Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, Yiddish in Vilnius
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Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism
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.
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 Clemens Heni, Danny Ben-Moshe, Dov Levin, Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Studies, International Commission for the Evaluation, Joseph Melamed, Marc Radomsky, Red-Brown Commission, Ronaldas Racinskas, Yehuda Bauer
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Lithuania’s State Jewish Museum Deletes Yiddish from all Three Vilnius Addresses
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.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Dr. Shimon Alperovich, Emanuelis Zingeris, Israeli Embassy in Vilnius, Samuel Bak, Simonas Alperavicius, State Jewish Museum of Lithuania, status of Yiddish in East European cities, Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, Yiddish in Eastern Europe, Yiddish in Lithuania
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The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine
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.
Posted in Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Ukraine, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Women's Rights
Tagged Feminism and the war in Ukraine, Ukraine and Lithuania, Vilma Fiokla Kiure
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High Ranking Lithuanian Holocaust Obfuscator Laurynas Kasčiūnas
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.
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 Andrius Kulikauskas, Arvydas Anusauskas, Audronius Azubalis, Grant Gochin, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas, Silvia Foti
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Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism
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.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Aleksandras Radčenko, Antisemitism in Lithuania, Dainius Babilas, Down of Nemunas Part y (Lithuania), Faina Kukliansky, Gintaras Aliksandravičius, Gintautas Paluckas, Jonas Petkevičiu, Jūratė Brasiūnienė, Justinas Argustas, Martynas Lukoševičius, Remigius Zamaitaitis, Snipishok (Snipiskes) Jewish cemetery, Vilna Jewish cemetery, Vilna Jewish cemetery (Piramont, Vygintas Gasparavičius
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Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary Film ‘Petrified Time’ on the Holocaust in Sheduva
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.
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 Antisemitism in Lithuania, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lost Shtetl Museum, Petrified Time, Roland Binet, Saulius Berzinis, Seduva (Lithuania), Sheduva (Lithuania)
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Full Translation of Jan.-Feb. 2025 Email Blast Defaming Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky with Links to Massive Online Defamation
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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The following is a full translation of the recent email blast published in Defending History in the original Lithuanian on 31 Jan. For background see the English introduction there, as well as reports and discussion on the DH editor’s Facebook page. For a full chronology of the now nineteen year old campaign against Holocaust survivors who survived by joining the anti-Nazi resistance see DH’s Blaming the Victims page. Obersvers have noted that the German teacher recruited to launch the campaign of defamation against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) and Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis, I. Tumavičiūtė in a January 2008 article in a far-right antisemitic daily (original; English translation) reappears this week as the campaign, apparently including the Genocide Center (GRRLC) and its director, is duly relaunched. Note the text contains the link to the online clip from a Soviet-era documentary where Fania Brantsovsky’s remarks about regrettable civilian casualties during the partisans’ battles against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania is maliciously taken out of context to imply targeting of civilians and/or her own participation in the battle described. The youtube video clip, that has been up for seven years is entitled “isgama branvcovskaja” that translates as “The Degenerate Brantsovsky” or “Scum Brantsovsky.” More background of “polite” state support for the defamation of Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance includes the public statement for a video documentary by the executive director of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”). The participation of the state-sponsored Genocide Center in this week’s events is apparently meant to give the new campaign an air of legitimacy, during a time of much-heightened antisemitic sentiment.
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https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4535/a/
COMMEMORATION of Kaniūkai Village Residents, Murdered by Soviet Partisans in 1944
February 2, 2025
10:30 AM – Holy Mass at St. Ignatius Church (Vilnius)
11:30 AM – Departure for Kaniūkai village cemetery (Šalčininkai district) after the Holy Mass
2:00 PM – Start of the commemoration event
Participants:
Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, General Director of GRRCL
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dr. Arunas Bubnys, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Kaniukai
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Antisemitism in Lithuania Soars with Rise of New Populist Party that Scored Major Electoral Success and is Now in Ruling Coalition
OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė
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OPINION
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Societal antibodies against a sudden rise in national antisemitism seem to have taken a rather notable hit in Lithuania since the sudden, and some would say, meteoric rise, of populist politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis. Just over one year ago, his new populist party came into being with an overt antisemitic component best known from its leader’s remarks on social media that combine classic Baltic Holocaust-based antisemitism with anti-Israel based bias in a new synthesis of prejudice against our country’s tiny Jewish minority, now numbering less than three thousand souls. It is called the “Dawn of Nemunas Political Party” (in Lithuanian: “Politinė partija “Nemuno Aušra” — PPNA), often shortened to “Dawn of Nemunas” or “Nemunas Dawn” (Lithuanian: Nemuno aušra — NA). It has become extremely popular and has not only entered parliament (the Seimas), but was been accepted in December, following elections in November, as coalition partner for the winning Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) led by the current prime minister, Gintautas Paluckas. Some of the ins-and-outs have been sumarized in Defending History.
Banner of Žemaitaitis new (and successful) populist, antisemitic party in the recent parliamentary elections. The “Pillars of Gediminas” symbol in the center of the logo, while neutral in the context of various government functions, has come to assume a connotation of far-right extremism when employed by political groups and organizations.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Roma, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Žemaitaitis Affair
Tagged Antisemitism in Lithuania, Ingrida Šimonytė, Nemunas Dawn party (Lithuania), Remigijus Žemaitaitis, Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, Vilma Fiokla Kiure
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Far Right Antisemitic Establishment & Genocide Center in Vilnius: Launching New Campaign of Defamation Against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024)
FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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The following email blast with its links to online sites, forthcoming events in Vilnius, and at its end, a link to an old and an out-of-context defamatory video extract on youtube, has been widely recirculated this week. It comes on the heels of the state Jewish museum’s ill-conceived event legitimizing the director of the state-funded Genocide Center, an institution that champions glorification of collaborators, defamation of victims and history revisionism in the far-right spirit of East European ultranationalism. See also the shameful longtime position of the state-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” and Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Resource Page; Fania Brantsovsky section; summary of state prosecutors’ campaign of defamation; index of topics and videos posted at the time of her death, at age 102, last September, including a call for a formal state apology to her family and those of fellow Holocaust survivors who became heroes of the free world by escaping the Vilna Ghetto to join up with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania. Fania’s last wish was for the “Jewish Partisan Fort” outside Vilnius to be restored and preserved for future generations. More on editor’s Facebook page (with discussion in the comments that follow).
[UPDATE OF 4 FEB. 2025: See now full translation of the text below, and further discussion on Dovid Katz’s Facebook page].
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Campaign against Jewish WW II partisans, Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, Genocide Center Vilnius
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Will Vilnius State Jewish Museum Reconsider Featuring Head of ‘Holocaust Fixing’ Genocide Center for International Holocaust Remembrance Day?
GENOCIDE CENTER & MUSEUM | A. BUBNYS | NOREIKA WORSHIP | ŠKIRPA WORSHIP | MUSEUMS
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OPINION
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The Defending History community, which has expressed profound admiration for recent major progress of Lithuania’s state Jewish museum (“Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History”), is saddened that the museum has chosen to commemorate this year’s International Holocaust Commemoration Day by a 30 Jan. event featuring revisionist historian Dr. A. Bubnys, director of the “Holocaust fixing” Genocide Center (who proudly and publicly poses with placards of leading Holocaust collaborators J. Noreika and K. Škirpa). Without including in the panel a single Lithuanian champion of truthtelling. Let alone a single Jewish member of the panel. Let alone families of survivors and victims.
To pour salt on the wounds, the announced topic is “Effectiveness of the Book as a Media in the Wars of Historical Memory.” Yes, the author of Genocide Center produced and published books at the vanguard of the new incarnation of Holocaust Denial via obfuscation, distortion, “Double Genocide” revisionism, victim-blaming and perpetrator-worship, is on offer from an EU/NATO member’s “state Jewish museum” as its way of marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For shame.
We call on the museum to cancel immediately this ill-conceived stunt, whose prime political purpose is an unadulterated attempt at legitimizing East European glorification of Holocaust collaborators and the ultranationalist rewriting of history via partnerships with ostensibly “Jewish entities.” Same tired old playbook, and it won’t work. There is, moreover, the insult for victims and survivors and the pain hoisted on their families today. This is grave disrespect toward the citizens of Lithuania whose hard earned tax euros support both institutions so generously. As for it all invoking the name of the Gaon of Vilna — he is surely twisting in his grave.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Dr. Arunas Bubnys, Dr. Simonas Strelcovas, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust Revisionism, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jonas Noreika, Kazys Škirpa, Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews, Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, Vilnius Jewish Museum
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The Saga of Saulius Beržinis’s Documentary on the Holocaust in Sheduva: In Spite of ‘Ban’, Copies are Circulating Widely
[LATEST UPDATE; ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: 27 APRIL 2023]
OPINION|FILM|BOLD CITIZENS|SAULIUS BERŽINIS|SHEDUVA | MUSEUM OF THE LOST SHTETL
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Partial chronology of recent events in the life and times of modern Lithuania’s first major Holocaust truth teller, documentary film maker
Saulius Beržinis
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JUMP TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE
TO UPDATES; LATEST UPDATE
FOREIGN JOURNALIST’S ARTICLE WITHDRAWN FROM PUBLICATION
DEFENDING HISTORY’S BERŽINIS SECTION
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What is it all about?
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Saulius Beržinis, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl"
Tagged "Litvak World", DigitalInk (Brussels), Dingęs štetlas, Ellex Valiunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ivan Glasenberg, Jerusalem of the North, Jonas Heraklis Dovydaitis, Museum of the Lost Shtetl, Roberta Grossman, Roberta Grossman + Lithuania, Roberta Grossman + Seduva (Sheduva), Rolandas Valiunas, S. Kanovich (Brussels), Saulius Berzinis, Šeduva (Sheduva), Sheduva (Seduva) Shtetl Museum, Strk Solutions (Brussels)
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Some Ins and Outs of the Antisemitic-Led Party now in Lithuania’s Governing Coalition
ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA
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From the Saga of Žemaitaitis
A publicly antisemitic party is in the governing coalition of one of the Eastern EU member states for the first time, raising deep concerns both near and far
NOTE: These highlighted facets, Nov. 2024 through January 2025, do not represent a chronological history. They represent salient landmarks in the saga from the perspective of Defending History.
His party is in the governing coalition of an EU state
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Andrew Higgins in the New York Times on inclusion of party of avowed antisemitic MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis in Lithuania’s new governing coalition; Defending History is cited. As PDF.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, News & Views, Žemaitaitis Affair
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Antisemitism, Holocaust Revisionism, and Anti-Israelism in Modern Lithuania
OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | LITHUANIAN JEWISH LIFE
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by Arkady Kurliandchik
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Reflecting on the current situation in Lithuania, where open antisemites do not hesitate to reveal themselves as such, I am trying to understand the origins of such behavior.
According to some historians, approximately 20,000 people in Lithuania actively participated in the extermination of Jews during World War II. And those who did not personally engage in the killings but considered such extermination to be just and commendable numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Antisemitic propaganda did not originate in Germany, but before the war, it became particularly sophisticated there. Jews were portrayed as insects that needed to be exterminated. And then this initiative was adopted and further developed in Lithuania.
Viewpoint of a Jewish citizen in today’s Vilnius
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arkady Kurliandchik, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Žemaitaitis Affair
Tagged Anti-Israelism in Lithuania, Antisemitism in Lithuania, Arkady Kurliandchik, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism (Lithuania)
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The German Army and People During the Holocaust: So What Were They Thinking?
OPINION | HISTORY
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by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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- In that town, I spied in the debris
- The thorn fragment of a parchment scroll
- And gently brushed away the dirt to see
- What tale it told.
- Written on it was “In a strange land” —
- Just a few words from the Bible, but the sum
- Of all one needs to understand
- Of a pogrom.
(by Z. Jabotinsky, following the Berdichev pogrom, from Jabotinsky. A Life by Hillel Halkin, Yale University Press, 2014)
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You are from Hashomer Hatsair? Mordecai asked me. Yes, I still remember the Zionists from Vienna.” Surprisingly the man who asked Chaika Grossman the question was an Austrian, officer in the Wehrmacht, stationed in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), who later was captured and killed by the Nazis because, as Grossman remembered, he was
“a tall officer, Schmidt, who served in the Vilna occupation army (…) He headed a collection station for soldiers who had lost their units. Cars and all kinds of papers were at his disposal. In short, the officer began a rescue operation.”
(from The Underground Army – Fighters of the Bialystok Ghetto, by Chaika Grossman, Holocaust Library, New York, 1987; she survived the war, emigrated to Israel and became a member of the Knesset)
So, one Wehrmacht officer who helped the Jews living underground outside the Vilna Ghetto. Is this enough to redeem the honor of Germany and Austria? Is this even worth mentioning at all when focusing not on individual heroism but on the bigger picture of what it is that happened?
I have long believed in the collective guilt of the German and Austrian nations in the perpetration of the Holocaust. That is my opinion.
Posted in History, News & Views, Roland Binet
Tagged German army and the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, Roland Binet, Wehrmact and the Holocaust
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‘Harvard Crimson’ Report on Zaritt Saga Fails to Mention Abuse of Harvard’s Name for Legitimizing the Campaigns of Academic Exclusion by ‘In Geveb’
IN GEVEB WATCH | OPINION | YIDDISH AFFAIRS
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VILNIUS—Today’s comprehensive and much-researched article on Saul N. Zarrit’s tenure situation in the Harvard Crimson fails to make any mention of his alleged instrumentalization (or, in more common parlance, “use as Harvard hit man”) by a retired grandee of the field — himself a sibling of the previous long-time, and illustrious, Harvard professor of Yiddish — in the editing (and providing of apparent “Big H legitimacy”) of the online publication “In Geveb” which, it is alleged, pursues the retired grandee’s vendettas against Yiddish scholars who do not meet with his liking.
After years of silence, this journal began to track the disturbing pattern in the section In Geveb Watch. Beyond possible abuse for selective bashing of scholars, there have been questions about alleged distortion (failure to even mention existence of the “other side of the story”) of the late 20th century history of Yiddish Studies at Oxford University. In the spirit of constructive response, this journal has constructed an in-progress online library of full scan-ins (gratis) of both the academic and literary publishing output, in the Yiddish language, of the Oxford Program in Yiddish. Work is underway on a parallel page providing publications in English, starting with Origins of the Yiddish Language and Dialects of the Yiddish Language.
Posted in In Geveb Watch, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs, Yiddish at Oxford
Tagged Abigail S. Gerstein, Alan M. Garber, Neil H. Shah, Saul Noam Zaritt, Tilly R. Robinson, Yiddish at Harvard
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Vilnius “Jews-for-Jesus” Conference to Feature Verbickienė and Toleikis
OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | ANTISEMITISM | VILNIUS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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by Dovid Katz
VILNIUS—For centuries, missionaries have cunningly preyed on small, weak, fractured and vulnerable Jewish communities, cleverly roping in widely known and respected figures to lend a veneer of academic or intellectual legitimacy. At issue is whether the majority Christian culture is prepared to accept as equals a minority whose theology differs, without campaigns to “recruit souls” which implies the worst about the faith and people whose souls need to be “saved.” Indeed, the necessary conclusion about the inherent evil (in the case at hand historically including the charge of deicide) of the unconverted played its role in the mindset that was among the conceptual prerequisites for the Holocaust. Around 96% of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens were massacred. Some local priests risked everything to hide and rescue a Jewish neighbor. Others gave pep talks to the local shooters ensuring them that they were firing at the Devil himself. The issue is one that calls for humility, intercultural respect, and human sensitivity.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius
Tagged Christian-Jewish relations (Lithuania), Jews for Jesus, Jurgita Verbickiene, Mark Kinzer, Missionary work in Lithuania, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, United in Jesus, Vytautas Toleikis, Yachad beYeshua
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