Evaldas Balčiūnas at Vilnius County Court Next Monday 15 June 2015
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prosecutors & Police 'Investigate' DH Author Evaldas Balčiūnas, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Free Speech in Eastern Europe, Free speech in Lithuania, Free speech in the Baltics, Holocaust Obfuscation
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New Conflict Over Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, As New Heritage Commission Gets Underway
Updates on the new conflict over the old Vilna Jewish cemetery site at Piramónt (now part of the Šnipiškės [Yiddish: Shnípishok] district), and the related issues surrounding a concurrently established new commission on Jewish heritage will be added here as they become available.
THE PAGE IS HERE
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Commission on Jewish heritage in Lithuania, Jewish cemeter at Piramont (Snipiskes, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, Shnipishok)
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Would this Building Project be Pursued if the Cemetery Were the Resting Place of Christians?
O P I N I O N / C H R I S T I A N – J E W I S H R E L A T I O N S / C E M E T E R I E S
by Pastor Michael Maass
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I would like to make an observation concerning the use of Jewish cemeteries for building projects, as this has come to be a major issue of controversy in Lithuania, and in other nations as well.
I would like to pose a question: Would these building projects be pursued if the cemeteries in question were the resting places of Catholics, Protestant Christians, or other non-Jewish people?
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Appeals to the European Commission on Piramónt, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Michael & Fausta Maass, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Racism
Tagged cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Christian-Jewish relations in Lithuania, Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, Shnipishok)
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Legacy of Rūta Vanagaitė’s 17 April 2015 Conference at Vilnius City Hall
[updated]
Tomas Venclova addresses Ruta Vanagaite’s conference at Vilnius City Hall on April 17, 2015. Photo: Julius Norwilla.
Posted in Events, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Rūta Vanagaitė, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis
Tagged Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff, Evaldas Balciunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Ingrida Vilkiene, Julius Norvila, Julius Norwilla, Pavel Tychtl, Ruta Vanagaite, Sarunas Liekis, Saulius Suziedelis, Tomas Venclova
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Lithuania’s President and Entourage Lay Wreaths at Ponár on May 8th…
VIDEO
Dovid Katz in Times of Israel (11 May)
Efraim Zuroff in i24 (12 May)
“Equally” at Monuments for Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish Victims, but Skipping the Stone Commemorating the 7,514 Red Army Prisoners of Various Nationalities Starved and Murdered at the Site.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged May 8th memorial at Ponar (Paneriai), Ponar (Paneriai, President Dalia Grybauskaite + Holocaust
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Dictionary of Lithuanian-Jewish Relations (in progress)
Antisemitism Conferences or Studies = Events guaranteed to exclude any mention of contemporary local antisemitism at the point of production, but will feature excellent glossy brochures on the past and on intolerance in faraway lands
Blizzard = Obfuspeak for when Estonia opts out of Obfuscationist documents and inches away from the expected Baltic positions
Posted in Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Opinion, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
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SLS’s 2015 Sutzkever Prize: Yiddish Poetry Serving Right-Wing East European Politics?
O P I N I O N
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The bizarre saga of the Montreal-based Summer Literary Seminars (SLS) “Jewish Lithuania Sutzkever Prize” continues apace with ever-increasing disrespect toward Abraham Sutzkever and his fellow Jewish partisans who helped liberate Lithuania from the Nazis, and ever more political entanglement with current geopolitical instrumentalization of Yiddish and Jewish causes in Eastern Europe in the context of East-West tensions.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Canada, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Abraham Sutzkever, André Aciman, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jamie Kirchick, Jewish partisans in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish partisans, Mikhail Iossel, SLS (Summer Literary Seminars) Lithuania, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, US Embassy in Vilnius, US State Department Holocaust policy
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What Did President of Lithuania Say, When Latvian Journalist asked about LGBT Rights?
H U M A N R I G H T S / L G B T R I G H T S
by Lithuanian LGBT Rights Organization / LGL
Reposted from the LGL site with permission
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A Latvian journalist has felt the wrath of the Lithuanian president after asking several questions that “have not been agreed upon.” The president insistently, and rather gracelessly, refused to answer questions about LGBT* rights in Lithuania.
Posted in Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, News & Views
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Lithuanian Translation of Efraim Zuroff’s 17 April 2015 Vilnius Conference (Prerecorded) Lecture
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
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Note: Authorized Lithuanian translation, provided by the Being a Jew project, of the pre-recorded video address by Dr. Efraim Zuroff at the 17 April 2015 conference on the Holocaust in Lithuania organized by Rūta Vanagaitė. The original English text is here.
Posted in Efraim Zuroff, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Efraimas Zurofas, Efraimas Zuroffas
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Lithuanian Translation of Dovid Katz’s 17 April 2015 Vilnius Conference Lecture
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Note: This text is the Lithuanian translation, provided by the Being a Jew project, of the written text of a lecture from the 17 April 2015 conference on the Holocaust in Lithuania organized by Rūta Vanagaitė. The original English is here.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", 70 Years Declaration, Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), EU, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dovid Katz, Dovidas Katzas, Dovydas Kacas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holokaustas Lietuvoje
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Jerusalem Debate on Antisemitism in Lithuania: Deputy Foreign Minister and Dr. Efraim Zuroff
Debate in Jerusalem, at World Forum for Combating Antisemitism, at Session on Holocaust Denial and Distortion in Eastern Europe
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I: Summary document released by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry boasts of “accomplishments in liquidation of consequences of the Holocaust”
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views
Tagged Efraim Zuroff
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Bubnys Replies to Editor of Defending History
O P I N I O N
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VILNIUS–Genocide Center historian Dr. Arūnas Bubnys has posted on Facebook the following comment about this journal’s editor.
Posted in Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Arunas Bubnys, Genocide Center
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A Protestant Pastor in Vilnius Speaks Out About Church Steps Still Made of Pilfered Jewish Gravestones
O P I N I O N
by Julius Norvila
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“And Rachel died and was buried on the road to Ephrath—the same is Beth-lehem. And Jacob set up a gravestone upon her grave, it is the Tomb of Rachel unto this very day.”
(Genesis 35, 19-20)
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Back in 1989 I had become a minister in our Reformed Evangelical Church here in Vilnius. The end of the 1980s in Lithuania had been a particularly pivotal period for church-state relations. The government changed its policy radically. There was a liberalization of religious activities and along with religious revivals came the idea of restitution of church properties that had been nationalized under the communist policies of the Soviet state. In order to bring to realization that idea, and to speed the process of restitution, we as reformed protestants organized a number of open air meetings and worship services on the street in front of historical church buildings in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania’s two major cities.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius)
Tagged Christian-Jewish relations, Dovid Katz, Genrich Agranovski, Irina Guzenberg, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish gravestones in Lithuania, Julius Norvila, Julius Norwilla, Pinchos Fridberg, Reformed Evangelical Church Lithuania
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Why We Have Not, Do Not and Will Not Talk About the Holocaust in Lithuania
O P I N I O N
by Rūta Vanagaitė
The following article by Rūta Vanagaitė, in the authorized English translation by Geoff Vasil, was first published in Lithuanian in Delfi. lt. The article emerged from the conference on Holocaust education organized by the author, held at Vilnius City Hall on 17 April 2015. Conference program. Conference’s final press release. Project website.
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Vilijampolė — a part of Kaunas — wintertime. The project is “Being a Jew.” A group of thirty teachers led by a Jewish guide is standing in the former Kaunas ghetto. Houses, garages, storage spaces, wood piles where during the war thousands of Jews, herded here like animals by the Nazis, milled about, yards where Jewish children played, and were later taken to the square or to one of the Kaunas forts and shot. The houses and storage buildings have been rebuilt, renovated, replaced, and there are Kaunas residents living in them now who don’t know where they live and what happened here before they were here. And how could they know? There is no written notice, nothing preserved, only a stone next to the entrance. And a building is being renovated which was the store whose display window once featured the head cut off of the rabbi who lived here.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Ruta Vanagaite
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Purveyor of Racist, Misogynist, Antisemitic, Homophobic, Nazist “Art” is Alleged to Work in Lithuania’s Economy Ministry
VILNIUS—Defending History has still had no reply to its open letter of August 2013 to the Minister of the Economy, asking him to look into multiple media reports that the pseudonymous “Zeppelinus,” Lithuania’s best-known purveyor of hate-popart on the internet is indeed a senior civil servant in his own ministry. The issue came to the fore once again in recent weeks with his “appeal” to the head of the Jewish community, and his latest production following a recent controversial conference (conference report).
The following are samples of his “art” in the service of racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism alongside glorification of Nazism. Samples can readily be found for other prejudices, including anti-Polish and anti-Russian hate. Hopefully human rights organizations will continue to counter such materials, first and foremost by establishing, in partnership with law enforcement, the identity of the purveyor of the hate materials, and the answer to the question about alleged continued high employment in a government ministry. An earlier smaller sampling with full translation is available here. Full disclosure: This journal’s editor has on occasion been a target of Mr. Zeppelinus, too.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Russian Speakers' Personal Status, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE), Women's Rights
Tagged Antisemitism in Lithuania, Economy Ministry of Lithuania, homophobia in Lithuania, human rights in Lithuania, LGBT rights in Lithuania, misogyny in Lithuania, Zeppelinus
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Twelve Issues in the Preservation of Lithuania’s Material Jewish Heritage (2015)
O P I N I O N
Note: Inspired by a Lithuanian government announcement (reported also on Delfi) of a new state-sponsored commission on these issues, and on the eve of its first international meeting in early May 2015, this list, the opinion of DH’s editor (who has benefited from discussions with specialists and the Holocaust survivor community in Lithuania), is offered in the spirit of a contribution to the debate on what is now most urgent in this field — what is morally pressing and unpostponable, and, also, what is, in general, not currently being dealt with by existing agencies, NGOs, projects and individuals. A proposed “urgent” list is ipso facto not an omnibus listing of issues, or of specific projects that are doing good work in their own areas; it is a list of what is “acute” rather than what is “chronic.” For more information, please consult Samuel D. Gruber’s outstanding website. See also our lists of external and on-site resources (including our Agranovski and Levinson sections). Hopefully, a comprehensive listing of issues — including these — will soon appear on the new commission’s own site.
UPDATE OF 1 JUNE 2015: “THE THIRTEENTH ISSUE”
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Dovid Katz, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort
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A Jewish Hideout Discovered in Butrimonys
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Andrius Kulikauskas
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Renovation of the ground floor of an art gallery in the town of Butrimonys, Lithuania has revealed the existence of an unusual cellar that was apparently a Jewish hideout during the Holocaust. Daina Nemeikštienė, the owner of the gallery, “Dainos galerija”, is moving forward with the renovation, which means that what remains of the cellar will be cemented over, at least for now. Could some day this hideout offer an opportunity for respecting, valuing, studying, preserving and highlighting Litvak and Lithuanian heritage? For now, it illustrates the challenges in honoring even the most heroic aspects of the Holocaust.
Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Andriius Kulikauskas, Butrimants (Lithuania), Butrimonys, Dainos galerija (Butrimonys), Holocaust in Lithuania
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When the Lithuanian Prime Minister Interrupts his Schedule to Greet Some Very Non-Litvak Rabbis from London
Trix & Treats for Londoners in Vilnius?
Why did Lithuania’s Prime Minister Entertain Non-Litvak (“Galitsyáner”) Rabbis from London to “Permit” a $25,000,000 Convention Center Project in the Heart of the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?
All three Vilnius rabbis were excluded from the conversation. And — an international (secular) “Heritage Commission” was set up to “save” Jewish cemeteries…
Above: Prime Minister of Lithuania Algirdas Butkevičius welcomes London-based rabbis from CPJCE who “permitted” a $25,000,000 convention center project for the middle of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. Below: Government’s top Jewish affairs maestro Lina Saulėnaitė entertains the delegation. PM is 3rd from left. A 2009 U.S. State Department cable refers to these rabbis being paid $100,000 for “supervising” some “beautification” and “exploratory digging” but what are they being paid this time, for “supervising” construction of the convention and entertainment center? IMAGE: Stills from the Lrytas.lt Lituanian TV video.
Posted in CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
Tagged CPJCE, CPJCE (Committee for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe), Rabbi Abraham Ginsberg (CPJCE), Snipiskes / Piramont / Jewish cemetery
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Defending History Team at Vilnius County Court to Support Evaldas Balčiūnas
VILNIUS—At yet another frivolous-case hearing this morning, four supporters of Defending History author Evaldas Balčiūnas turned out to provide moral support. Balčiūnas is a major critic of public shrines, street names and monuments that honor Holocaust perpetrators, as well as an active opponent of neo-Nazi marches and activities, especially those with tacit support from elements of government.
Posted in Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prosecutors & Police 'Investigate' DH Author Evaldas Balčiūnas, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
Tagged Defending History team in Vilnius, Evaldas Balciunas, Freedom of speech in Lithuania, Freedom of speech in the Baltics
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