LONDON—The following is an excerpt, relevant to issues today, from Preliminary Report on Legislation and Practice Relating to the Protection and Preservation of Jewish Burial Grounds. Lithuania. September 2008. It was issued by Lo Tishkach Foundation / European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative with the support of the Claims Conference and the Conference of European Rabbis. A PDF of the entire report is available here.
Text of Sept. 2008 Report by Lo Tishkach Foundation / European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative
Text of Sept. 2008 Press Release from Experts Group on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
VILNIUS—Because of its renewed relevance, the press release of the Experts Group summarizing the findings of the Geophysical Survey, dated 3 September 2008, concerning the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, is republished:
U.S. State Department’s 2006 Conclusion about the Location of the Sports Palace in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
VILNIUS—The following excerpt from a 21 June 2006 United States report from the American Embassy here to the Secretary of State in Washington deals with questions around the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. The site, known to generations of Vilna Jews as Piramónt, is within the Šnipiškės district (itself in Yiddish: Shnípishok).
The document, entitled “Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius — Overview and Update,” now published at part of the Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (PDF here) emanates from a period when the “current debate” was focused on two new buildings, rather than on the Sports Palace per se.
Dr. Rachel Margolis Dies in Rehovot; Didn’t Get to See Her Native Vilna One Last Time
רחל מאַרגאָליס (מַרְגָלִית) ז″ל
Rachel Margolis
Vilna, 28 October 1921 — Rehovot, 6 July 2015
About Rachel Margolis: Shimon Alperovich, Algirdas Brazauskas, Gordon Brown, Abraham Foxman, Steinar Gil, Martin Gilbert, Chen Ivri Apter, Dovid Katz (Y), Francois Laumonier, NCSJ, Geoff Vasil. UK House of Lords, 5 US Congressmen, 9 Western ambassadors in Vilnius.
A Letter from Leffond, France to the Mayor of Vilnius, Capital of Lithuania
O P I N I O N
by Christian Bonneville
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Leffond, France, 5 July 2015
Hon. Remigijus Šimašius, Mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania
Monsieur le Maire,
- Convention and Congress Center
- Conversion of the Sport Palace Center along the Neris at the Piramónt Location
Congratulations on your election and your determination to develop the cohesion and the attractiveness of the city to be enriched with new facilities and services including a new Conference and Congress Center.
Dancing on Jewish Graves in Vilna
O P I N I O N
by Pinchos Fridberg
Editor’s note: Reprint from The Times of Israel, where this article, with several photographs, appeared on 25 June 2016.
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I am a Holocaust survivor. I was born here in Vilnius (Yiddish: Vílne), today’s capital of Lithuania, known forever as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” for its vibrant Jewish culture, religious and secular, for hundreds of years. Today our post-Holocaust Jewish community is a tiny remnant, just a few thousand people, but we are vibrant, and, as always, a community of many opinions. Once again, a question has arisen that calls for robust discourse.
Vilnius’s Shnipishek Jewish Cemetery
O P I N I O N
by Bernard Fryshman, PhD
This article appeared in today’s edition of Yated Ne’eman. The PDF of the original is available here.
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First, a brief review: In June 2005, Reb Chizkiya Kalmanowitz discovered construction taking place in the Shnipishek Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius. The Shnipishek Cemetery is where the Gaon of Vilna was buried, as was the Ger Tzedek. Even now, the cemetery contains the bodies of the Chayei Adam and the Be’er Hagolah among many others.
Israel’s Leading Litvak Rabbis Issue Impassioned Protest Against Convention Center Plans for the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
JERUSALEM—Leading Lithuanian-tradition (Litvak) rabbis who head yeshivas in Israel have signed an impassioned plea for the Lithuanian government to abandon plans for a massive new convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt, now in the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania (background; the paper trail to date). Among the signatories to the poster are Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, Rabbi Israel Isaac Kalmanovitz and Rabbi Tzvi Rotberg. Some of the signatories add handwritten notes with personal observations on the events underway in Vilnius (see lower left area for the handwritten addenda).
Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada Protests Desecration of Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—The Central Rabbinical Congress (CRC) of the U.S.A. and Canada today released to the media the facsimile of the original Hebrew letter it has issued concerning plans for a convention center at the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt, now in the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania (background; the paper trail to date). The facsimile is followed by an English translation provided by the CRC.
EXCERPT:
“We turn to the enlightened government of Lithuania, and to the European Union, and say: Please Brothers—do no evil! O Heaven! Aren’t we all children of the same father and mother? Why are we different than every other nation, that you decreed such terrible things against us?”
Vilna Gaon Synagogue in Tel Aviv Posts Protest Against Vilnius Convention Center Plan for Old Jewish Cemetery
TEL AVIV—The famous Vilna Gaon Synagogue (Beys Hakneses Ha-Gro / Bet Hakeneset Ha-Gra), founded in Tel Aviv in 1934, issued a poster that has appeared in synagogues, yeshivas and other institutions in various parts of Israel. Reproduced below (sent by a correspondent), it protests plans by Vilnius government and business entities to further desecrate the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt, now in the Šnipiškės district, by plans to build a twenty-five million dollar convention center in the heart of the historic cemetery (background; the paper trail to date). The protest poster is signed by a number of famous rabbis, including Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Halevi, head of the rabbinical court of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and Rabbi Elijah Landa, a direct descendant of the Gaon of Vilna, Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (Eylióhu ben Shlóyme-Zálmen, 1720 − 1797), who signs on behalf of the entire family.
The June 2015 Memorial for the Lietūkis Garage Massacre in Kaunas, Lithuania
O P I N I O N / E Y E W I T N E S S A C C O U N T
by Julius Norwilla
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To mark the 74th anniversary of one of the iconic events of the Lithuanian Holocaust, the infamous Lietūkis Garage Massacre of 27 June 1941, the Kaunas Jewish Community organized its annual memorial event at the site, last Friday, 26 June 2015. The massacre, carried out by local Lithuanian “patriots” wearing the white armbands of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), butchered dozens of Jewish passers-by at a garage on Kaunas’s Vytautas Avenue, using a variety of execution methods, including clubbing to death with crowbars, and particularly, forcing water from high-pressure hoses into bodily orifices of the victims until they burst. A growing crowd, including women holding up their young children to get the best views, cheered them on.
Rabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer: Rabbinic Judgment on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery (Manuscript)
by Rabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer
Editor’s note: The author is president of the World HaGró (Gaon of Vilna) Center in Israel, and co-editor of the Center’s seventy published volumes of the Gaon of Vilna’s works. He has been based in Vilnius around twenty-five years. The digital text of the judgment is available here. For background on the issue, see here. For the paper trail to date, see here.
Rabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer: Rabbinic Judgment on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
O P I N I O N
by Rabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer
Editor’s note: The author is president of the World HaGró (Gaon of Vilna) Center in Israel, and co-editor of the Center’s seventy published volumes of the Gaon of Vilna’s works. He has been based in Vilnius around twenty-five years. The original handwritten document, with the rabbi’s signature and personal stamp, is available here. For background on the issue, see here. For the paper trail to date, see here. A registry of the mounting international agreement with Rabbi Feffer’s position is here.
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בס″ד ח′ תמוז התשע″ה לפ″ק פה ווילנא
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זעקת קודש
למען אוהביך שוכני עפר בבית העלמין הישן דווילנא
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אני הרב הדר בעיר הזאת זה קרוב ל-25 שנה ומכיר היטב תהלוכותי′ה ובעיותי′ה, וחרד לעתידה היהודי ועל זכרון עברה הק′ והחשוב כידוע לכל, ועתה ראיתי חובה גדולה בנפשי לצאת בגלוי ולהסיר הלוט בעניין הנשגב דלהלן, ולפרסם האמת ללא צל ספק – העובדות הברורות כשמש בצהרים ולעמוד בפרץ ולא לתת למשחיתים לבוא ולנגוף ח″ו, ואדרבה ביתר תוקף ועוז דקדושה לעמוד איתן על משמרת הקודש למען ה′ ותורתו הק′ והאמונה הטהורה.
Šokiai ant Vilniaus žydų kapų
Pinchos Fridberg (Times of Israel)
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NOTE: The following Lithuanian translation of Professor Pinchos Fridberg’s Yiddish article on the fate of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius was prepared by Julius Norwilla. The English version, “Dancing on Jewish Graves in Vilna” appeared in today’s Times of Israel.
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Išgyvenau holokaustą. Gimiau čia, Vilniuje (Jidiš: Vilnė), mieste, kuris dabar yra Lietuvos sostinė, kuris amžinai bus žinomas kaip „Lietuvos Jeruzalė“ dėl čia šimtmečiais klestėjusios žydiškosios religinės ir pasaulietinės kultūros. Mes, holokaustą išgyvenusieji žydai, dabar esame vos keleto tūkstančių žmonių bendruomenė, kurioje esame aktyvūs ir, kaip įprasta, mūsų nuomonės nebūtinai visuomet sutampa. Tačiau dabar turime klausimą, atsakymas į kurį reikalauja pažvelgti į gyvenimą iš esmės.
Rewriting History in Latvia
B O O K S / L A T V I A
by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud/Belgium)
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Since I became interested in the fate of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Latvia, rather late (2009), I never failed to buy books when I visited that country, first and foremost written by Jewish survivors of these terrible times, but, also, some books written by non-Jewish Latvians in order to see how they perceived these tragic events, how they related to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and how they presented the history of the German occupation and the mass slaughter of more than 95% of the Jewish population of their country (using the figures of Jews on site at the time of the Nazi invasion as the basis for historians’ estimates).
Why Was Richard Maullin, Head of California ISO, Honored by the Foreign Minister of Lithuania?
O P I N I O N
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LOS ANGELES—Richard A. Maullin, elected less than a year ago as the chair of the California Independent System Operator (ISO) Board, was lavishly honored here on May 31st by both the Lithuanian ambassador to the United States and the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. The latter, in the tradition of royalty, meticulously placed the Lithuanian Diplomatic Star around the neck of Dr. Maullin, a major American pollster and principal of the LA polling and public policy research firm FM3, often still known by its older name Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates.
In Defense of Transparency at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
O P I N I O N / M U S I C
by Ronald C. Kent
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In January 2012 I became aware of a then-upcoming performance of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since I knew that Carl Orff was a Nazi-approved composer, who created this work in 1936, I wrote a letter to Maestro Andreas Delfs and Music Director Edo de Waart, requesting that they place the biography of Orff during the Nazi period in the program, in the interest of enlightenment, transparency, and full disclosure, thereby situating “Carmina Burana” in its historical context for listeners.
Ukrainian Hitlerist Icons Celebrated in Weston-on-Trent in Derbyshire, England
O P I N I O N / U K / U K R A I N E
by J. North
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Earlier this month, the Ukrainian Youth Association (CYM Great Britain) held a remembrance day at the Tarasivka camp at Weston-on-Trent in Derbyshire. They advertised the event on their website (http://cym.org/uk) and with a poster replete with (ultra)nationalist imagery.
Herbert Block’s Clarification on Participation in Lithuanian Government’s New Heritage Commission
NEW YORK—Herbert Block’s office today issued the following statement which in effect modifies the Lithuanian government’s published list of members of its new commission on the Lithuanian Jewish heritage. This clarification is now linked at relevant points in Defending History’s recent report on the cemetery saga in Vilnius.
Herbert Block has informed Defending History that, while he was appointed to the new Commission by the Government of Lithuania without prior notice, and was honored by the designation, he formally resigned this position. As a Member of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a US federal government agency, Mr. Block is not permitted to serve on any body appointed by a foreign government.
Mr. Block attended the May 7, 2015 meeting in Vilnius only as an Observer on behalf of the US Commission.
High Intrigue Over the Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
by Dovid Katz
Updates in [brackets] to 12 July 2015
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VILNIUS—According to Lithuanian media sources, including the highly respected English-language Lithuania Tribune (now merged with Delfi.lt), the government, working in concert with property developers, plans to declare the controversial project of a huge convention and entertainment center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery site as a “project of national importance.” The move enables an application to the European Union for a grant of 13 million euros (14.64 million US dollars at current rates) as part of a grand-total (for now) of 22.8 million euros (25.67 million US dollars) for the new complex. The nation’s prime minister has told Lithuanian media that “after the modern congress center is completed, private investors could build a hotel, parking lots and other infrastructure,” eliciting fears that all of the old Jewish cemetery is becoming a cash cow slated for developers for years to come. The Lithuania Tribune / Delfi.lt report concludes with an estimate of “110 million euros in economic and social benefits over 15 years” in addition to “600,000 foreign tourists and 2.2 million local tourists to Vilnius over that time period, with their spending estimated at 183 million and 60 million euros, respectively,” in other words, with profits from the old Jewish cemetery exceeding the equivalent of 250 million dollars, apart from the millions to be had from the building projects per se. Some estimates are provided in Baltic Course.