VILNIUS—While some biographies cite 1937 as the year of Professor Valerijus Čekmonas’s birth, many of his numerous students and admirers both here in Vilnius, and internationally, who were heartboken by his untimately death in 2004, are taking the 1936 year as definitive and celebrating his life this season on the occasion of what would have been his eightieth birthday.
Vilnius Remembers Valerijus Čekmonas on his 80th
Posted in Lithuania, News & Views, Obituaries, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Conference for Cekmonas's 80th birthday, Valeri Cekman, Valerijus Cekmonas, Valery Cekman, Vilnius University
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Why Can’t Riga Just Replace a Plaque on the Wall?
OPINION | POLITICS OF MEMORY | LATVIA
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by Aleksandrs Feigmanis (Riga)
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I am a tour guide in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Whenever I take tourists through Riga’s fabled Old Town, we together pass, on the way from Town Hall Square to the still-functioning synagogue, the address Peldu Street 15, right on the corner of Peldu and Kungu. There is a high school building and a twenty-four-hour parking lot guarded all the time. And right in front of us, on the outside wall of Peldu 15, there is the half-destroyed plaque for the Righteous Among the Nations Anna Alma Pole.
Posted in Aleksandrs Feigmanis, Latvia, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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New Section: Vilnius Jewish Life
NOTICE TO OUR READERS:
VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE
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VILNIUS—Defending History announced to its readers today that a new section called Vilnius Jewish Life is being initiated. It will retroactively include dated posts roughly from the beginning of 2016 onward.
Posted in Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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Divide and Conquer?
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Iam very concerned about the situation for the last several years at our Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC). More specifically, about the LJC’s chairperson, whose policies have brought about instability and disunity in the Jewish community. It is a sad paradox, that a non-religious person is responsible for the most acutely religious questions in our community. It is even more unacceptable that a secular person, drawn to mundane and material things, would deign to push around the rabbis in town as if they are pawns on the chess table. Such behavior is totally opposite to Jewish religious standards. Yet for external consumption it is called “a renaissance of religious Judaism.”
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein
Tagged Faina Kukliansky, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Jewish religious life in Vilnius, Lithuanian Jewry, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Ruta Bloshtein
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Skaldymas ir valdymas
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Ruta Bloshtein
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Noriu išreikšti susirūpinimą dėl padėties, kuri jau keletą metų klostosi Lietuvos žydų bendruomenėje. O būtent, dėl LŽB pirmininkės veiksmų, keliančių pavojų Lietuvos žydų gyvenimo vienovei ir darnai. Paradoksas ir liūdna ironija tame, kad žydų religinius klausimus sprendžia nereliginga moteris. Ir dar labiau nepriimtina, kad pasaulietė, siekdama savanaudiškų žemiškų tikslų, stumdo rabinus kaip šachmatų figūras. Tokia elgsena prieštarauja religinėms tradicijoms. Ir tai vadinama „judaizmo atgimimu“?
Posted in Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein
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Leon Kaplan Comments on Eviction by Jewish Community Head of Rabbi Krinsky and his Fellow Worshippers
VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | HUMAN RIGHTS | OPINION
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by Leon Kaplan
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The following two comments appeared in Facebook on 1 November 2016 and on 3 November 2016, following publication of Dovid Katz’s 1 November article in Defending History. They have been slightly condensed and copy-edited here.
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1 November 2016:
It is time to stand up to this behavior. Does Madam Kukliansky think that in Ponar and the other 250 places of murder that Jews, our brothers and sisters, our children (kinderlakh) had been separated at the time of murder and thrown into a Chabad ditch and into a Misnagdim ditch? If this is a decision by Madam Kukliansky, to call the police or to lock out Krinsky from the building of the Jewish Community, then it is simply disgusting.
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Leon Kaplan, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Opinion
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Friday, October 28th, in Vilnius
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Jacob Piliansky
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On Friday, October 28th 2016, at 5 PM, I approached the gates of our Choral Synagogue, at Pylimo Street 39, for the weekly Eve of Sabbath service. I saw that the gates were locked shut. Finally I noticed Kalman Krinsky, son of Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, the city’s Chabad rabbi for the past twenty-two years. Kalman told me in Yiddish (we speak Yiddish to each other) that the shul was closed and that the prayer service had been moved to the Jewish community’s building at Pylimo 4.
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Jacob Piliansky, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs
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Barring a Jew from Prayer Services is a Human Rights Issue
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Vilnius’s Chabad rabbi, has served Jewish people here and the city’s diverse cultural mosaic for some twenty-two years. And sure, he has had his share of issues, run-ins and errors over the decades, just like everyone else in town. His numerous packed Jewish holiday celebrations have become part and parcel of the city’s remarkable twenty-first century Jewish footprint, most famously on Chanukah. But yet again, he was denied entry to the Jewish community building for daily prayer services this morning by the burly security guards at the official Jewish Community building, who seemed highly adept at avoiding frontal photography. Services were abruptly moved there on Friday evening because of a mysterious “plumbing problem” (heating, in some versions) at the city’s Choral Synagogue. Then, on Friday evening 28 October, police were called to evict from the makeshift prayer address Rabbi Krinsky and his children, pupils and co-worshippers (reports by R. Bloshtein, Z. Olickij, and J. Piliansky). A sad date in the modern history of Jewish Vilnius.
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Opinion, Rákishok (Rokiškis)
Tagged Chabad in Vilnius, Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, Vilnius rabbis
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A Confusing Week in Jewish Vilnius
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE
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by Zecharya Olickij
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This last week has been very confusing to me. I’m a local Vilna Jew, and I have been very happy to see the harmony in the city’s Choral Synagogue for many years now. In fact, for over a year now, all Jews have been praying together in absolute harmony in the main synagogue, the only one to survive the war intact.
I was very happy when I saw a large number of local Jews (most of whom are not personally observant) flocking to the synagogue to celebrate Simchas Torah last week. How beautiful to watch the dancing, the singing, the joy, the Torah. No strife, no quarrels, no negativism. The atmosphere of sheer holiness of this ancient and eternal Jewish joy. It was wonderful.
But then came Friday evening (the 28th of October, eve of the Sabbath of 27 Tishrei).
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Chabad Lubavitch, Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Jewish life in Vilnius, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Vilna Jewish life, Vilnius rabbis, Vilnius synagogue
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Did “Double Genocide” Just Get to the “O’Reilly Factor”?
MEDIA WATCH | OPINION | USA
by Dovid Katz
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NEW YORK—At least a few viewers of the Fox News Channel’s premier prime time program, “The O’Reilly Factor” were taken aback to hear Bill O’Reilly spurt out last night, in his best high-school teacher by-the-way factual tone, “Stalin was as bad as Hitler! Alright, it’s the same thing!” during a segment presented as uncontested truth. The guest inspiring the “truism” was Mr. Marion Smith, executive director of the Washington DC based “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” (sometimes known for short as VOC).
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", United States
Tagged Bill O'Reilly, Bill O'Reilly and Israel, Bill O'Reilly and Jewish issues, Bill O'Reilly and Jews, Double Genocide, Fox News and Jewish issues, Hitler and Stalin, Marion Smith, O'Reilly Factor and Holocaust issues, Prague Declaration, Prague Platform for European Memory and Conscience, The O'Reilly Factor, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
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When “Putin” Becomes an Excuse for Hitler-Glorification
OPINION
by Dovid Katz
This article appeared today in Jewish Currents:
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A recent Washington Post editorial rightfully takes Russia and China to task for persecuting those who dare challenge the state’s distortions of history. In the case of Russia, there is mention of the disgraceful prosecution of a citizen for pointing out that the September 1939 dismemberment of Poland was a joint venture of Germany and the USSR codified by the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. But wait a minute.
READ MORE
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, Estonia, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Simon Wiesenthal Center
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5777 New Year’s Greeting to Our Jewish Readers Everywhere
TO OUR JEWISH READERS EVERYWHERE:
A HAPPY, HEALTHY, CREATIVE NEW YEAR
5777
אַ גליקלעכן, געזונטן, שעפערישן נײַעם יאָר און אַ גמר חתימה טובה
תשע″ז
Posted in Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs
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Vilnius Municipality Leak Suggests Plan to Dismantle Jewish Cultural Center in Vilnius Old Town
VILNIUS—Just as Jewish people in Vilnius were getting down to intense preparations for the Jewish new year (Rosh Hashonnah, Rosheshóne in Yiddish), an official at Vilnius City Hall (the municipality) provided to Defending History (and presumably other publications) a letter that purports to be from the official Jewish community’s lay leader, Faina Kukliansky (in professional life the nation’s top EU citizenship lawyer for foreigners) that would sound the death knell for the internationally admired Jewish Cultural and Information Center (JCIC) on Mesiniu Street in the Lithuanian capital’s scenic Old Town.
Posted in Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs
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New “Rules of the Synagogue” Document Brings Disquiet to Single Vilnius Synagogue
DOCUMENTS
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The following new Rules of the Synagogue document appeared in two long-standing dusty frames in the entrance hallway on approximately 29 September 2016, at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue on Pylimo Street 39 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The document, dated 22 September 2016, in Lithuanian alone, replaces a set of rules that were posted bilingually for many years, in Yiddish and Lithuanian. Some members of the congregation believe that these Rules were enacted only after a 27 September 2016 morning services incident, at which a rabbi resident in Vilnius for 22 years was asked by the gabbai (Yiddish gábe, the official synagogue administrator), at a time when the official rabbis were not present, to blow the traditional ram’s horn (shofar, Yiddish shóyfer, Litvak Yiddish shéyfer, Israeli shofár), in the run-up to the Jewish New Year.
Posted in Documents, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Yiddish Affairs
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World Famous Litvak Rabbi Condemns Plans for Congress Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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Rabbi Tzvi Rotberg, One of the world’s top Litvak rabbis and head of the world-famous yeshiva (rabbinical academy) Beth Meir, in Bnei-Brak, Israel, issued a public letter, in rabbinic Hebrew, on 25 September 2016 pleading with Lithuanian state authorities to intervene to stop the building of a planned National Congress Center atop the graves of some of the greatest Lithuanian rabbis of the last thousand years. He refers metaphorically to the “outcry of those that lie in the dust from the previous generations who were righteous and pure” and condemns plans for celebrations and unholy events on top of their remains. Rabbi Rotberg is the grandson of the fabled Rabbi Tuvia Rotberg, a close disciple and associate of the Chofetz Chaim (Yiroel-Meir of Radin).
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
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All Welcome at Q & A Session with DH Editor in Vilnius
IN VILNIUS ON THURSDAY EVENING:
ALL WELCOME AT QUESTION-AND-ANSWER & DISCUSSION EVENING WITH OUR EDITOR, DOVID KATZ, AT THE JEWISH CULTURAL AND INFORMATION CENTER
THIS THURSDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2016 AT 6:15 PM AT MESINIU 3 IN VILNIUS OLD TOWN
Posted in Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs
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September 23rd Events in the Vilnius Region
DEFENDING HISTORY WAS THERE
Annual Sept. 23 Official Commemoration Ceremony at the Ponár (Paneriai) Mass Murder Site Outside Vilnius, Lithuania
Historic Breakthrough as Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Faina Kukliansky Finally Calls for Removal of Street Names and Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators, Boldly Citing Juozas Krikštaponis, Jonas Noreika, and Kazys Škirpa; Sharp Contrast with Last Year’s Failed Event
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Events, Israel, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), September 23rd Commemorations
Tagged Amir Maimon, Efraim Zuroff, Faina Kukliansky, glorification of Holocaust collaborators, Holocaust Commemoration in Lithuania, Holocaust museum in Vilnius, Jonas Noreika, Julius Norwilla, Juozas Krikštaponis, Kazys Škirpa, Ponar (Paneriai, Ruta Vanagaite
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Run-Up to Lithuania’s Sept. 23rd 2016 Holocaust Commemoration Day
Events in the Week of Lithuania’s Official September 23rd Holocaust Commemoration Day
Vilnius mayor — and nation’s president and prime minister — face a stark choice on whether to speak out with moral clarity on painful issues of city-center street names and plaques honoring Holocaust collaborators, and the desecration of the country’s oldest Jewish cemetery by a new congress center, prior to this year’s series of official gala Vilna Ghetto commemoration events, 20-28 September 2016
OUR TAKE ON THE NEW HEBREW-YIDDISH STREET SIGN IN THE OLD JEWISH QUARTER
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Events, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations
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