Tag Archives: Danny Ben-Moshe

Review of Michael Kretzmer’s Documentary Film “J’Accuse”



OPINION | FILM | ARTS | MEDIA | COLLABORATOR GLORIFICATION | J. NOREIKA

by Dovid Katz

Genuine heroes of this saga—both written out of the film

  • At left: Evaldas Balčiūnas (who first called his nation’s attention (in Lithuanian) and the world’s (in English) to state-sponsored adulation of Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrator J. Noreika. That was a year after his classic essay “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” appeared in Defending History in 2011. Here pictured at Vilnius County Court after one of the hearings in the litany of kangaroo cases against him (Defending History was there at each hearing to support him). He is DH’s 2023 Person of the Year.
  • At right: Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas brought his self-crafted poster to a nationalist event on independence day in central Vilnius, with an image to show his people the kind of national hero Lithuania should be celebrating: the inspirational Holocaust-era rescuer Malvina Šokelytė Valeikienė (DH’s person of the year in 2018). The gentle, teetotaling mathematician and philosopher took this sign right into the heart of an alcohol-fueled ultranationalist demonstration, leaving observers of every persuasion in awe of his courage. Dr. Kulikauskas boldly led the effort to expose Noreika in Lithuania and is the de facto author of the primary documents underpinning the legal petitions to the state’s Genocide Center and its courts. A Lithuanian American born and raised in California, he and his family migrated to newly free Lithuania decades ago.
  • See DH’s Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas sections. A future film maker might even find an enchanting angle in the stark differences between the two Lithuanian heroes of this story. One is a devout Catholic, the other an atheist. One is an anarchist, the other a nationalist. One an urban family guy, the other a lone thinker and dreamer in a faraway wooden hut in the depths of the Lithuanian countryside.

VILNIUS—Michael Kretzmer’s new documentary J’Accuse! provides a terrific extended interview with legendary truth-teller Silvia Foti. The film’s narration provides effective statements on ongoing East European state adulation of Nazi collaborators though focused on just one, Jonas Noreika of Lithuanian Holocaust infamy (who was the Chicago-born Foti’s grandfather).

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Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Michael Kretzmer's Documentary Film "J'Accuse!" on the Lithuanian Holocaust, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Review of Michael Kretzmer’s Documentary Film “J’Accuse”

Vilnius Prosecutor Skirts Key Question: Will the List of Alleged Holocaust Perpetrators be Made Public?



LITHUANIA | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GENOCIDE CENTER | OPINION

by Dovid Katz

 

VILNIUS—An array of local observers, speaking as usual off the record here, declared themselves “in shock” over the official response to the Jewish Community released by Prosecutor General Rimvydas Valentukevičius yesterday, dealing with widespread requests that the state’s Genocide Center — with which his Prosecutor General’s office has closely cooperated on Holocaust issues for many years — release the list of around two thousand names of alleged Holocaust murderers that it recently announced it had compiled, drawing international press attention. Over the years, the Center has been critiqued by the Wiesenthal Center and by various authors in Defending History for its alleged history-distorting antics; Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas are among the boldest challengers of the Center’s moral integrity. (See also DH’s page on the Genocide Center, and on the museum which it directs in central Vilnius.)

The Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel has long maintained an estimate of 23,000 local perpetrators involved in the killing. Thousands were listed on the Association’s website until June 2009 when the Israeli Foreign Ministry, under pressure from Lithuanian counterparts, itself harshly pressured the Association’s then chairperson to remove the list from its website. But it continues to circulate widely both on the internet and its fuller form is preserved in Joseph Melamed’s 1999 book, Crime and Punishment (Tel Aviv 1999), where the lists of alleged killers are organized by region and town.

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Hungary Rewrites History



O P I N I O N

by Danny Ben-Moshe

This comment, republished here with the author’s permission, first appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 22 February 2014.


My 2012 documentary film Rewriting History tracked the emergence of “Double Genocide” and the rewriting of the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

The film warned that what was occurring in Lithuania was a harbinger of something that could become more widespread and ultimately mainstream in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately recent events in Hungary bear this out.

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Yad Vashem and the “Two Genocides”



O P I N I O N

by Danny Ben-Moshe  (Melbourne)

This op-ed was first published in Jerusalem Report in August 2013.


I remember my first visit to Yad Vashem as a 16-year-old visitor to Jerusalem. It had a profound, and indeed formative, effect on me. I left there with a badge clipped to my lapel inscribed with the motto, zakhor, the Hebrew word for remember.

Yet for all its splendid work, Yad Vashem whose formal title is The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, I am sorry to say, is now dramatically failing both the martyrs and heroes of the country where the percentage of the Jewish community annihilated in the Holocaust was higher than anywhere else in Europe – Lithuania.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Australia, Danny Ben-Moshe, Double Genocide, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yad Vashem and the “Two Genocides”

Films, Videos, Radio, Plays (completed or in progress to summer 2013)


See also: Defending History’s Film and Theatre section; recent films with Dr. Efraim Zuroff; films on rescuers.

• Rewriting History by Marc Radomsky and Danny Ben-Moshe: Reviews; 2013 USA screening tour; Facebook page; SYD site. Background of Prague Declaration, the resistance to which led to the film.

Prosecutors help neo-Nazis target women’s rights advocates (instead of standing with the victims); see also Lina Žigelytė’s essay.

• When Double Genocide means Single Genocide (Orwell?).

• BBC World Service’s Heart and Soul by Wendy Robbins (Dec. 2010).

•  Juergen Hobrecht’s new documentary on the Riga Ghetto.

BBC News The Battle for Memory by Tim Whewell (July 2008).

• Defending Holocaust History (release date: 23 September 2013).

• Saulius Beržinis and Ona Biveinienė on the Holocaust in Jurbarkas (Yurberik).

• Alicija Žukauskaitė’s An Elegy for Honey and Tar (on the Holocaust in Lithuania).

• Daiva Čepauskaitė’s Kaunas play, Day and Night.

• Liza ruft! 

• Assorted clips.


Major New Film About Rescuers:

• The Pit of Life and Torment, by Lilija Kopač, Danutė Selčinskaja, Algis Liutkevičius and Anatolijus Tetiušinas, based on the life story of Moyshe Kukliansky and his family.


Films focused on Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, and including the nexus of failure of certain governments to take seriously the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the quest to distort history:

• CNN documentary featuring Efraim Zuroff in Lithuania: completed but never aired. . . Can it be rescued by a non-profit organization?

The Last Nazi Hunter, by Nitza Gonen, aired on Israeli television in 2012 [in Hebrew].

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Authors



Note: Each author is exclusively responsible for his or her signed contribution. DH’s transparency policy does not permit use of pseudonyms (with the one exception of legendary Vilna wag Motke Chabad). The editor is responsible for unsigned posts. We respect the right of reply and welcome submissions (at: info@defendinghistory.com).

Genrich Agranovski

Shimon Alperovich

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis

Yitzhak Arad

Evaldas Balčiūnas (+ the trials)

Chaim Bargman

Stanley H. Barkan

Ruth Barnett

Rabbi Elchonon Baron

Danny Ben-Moshe

Didier Bertin

Saulius Beržinis

Roza Bieliauskienė

Roland Binet

Herbert Block

Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein

Mark Blumberg

Aleksandras Bosas

Valentinas Brandišauskas

Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja)

Frank Brendle

Wyman Brent

Franziska Bruder

Chaim Burshtein

Simon Butt

Motke Chabad

Saul Chapnick

Milan Chersonski

Josh Cohen

Rachel Croucher

David Cukier

Algis Davidavičius

Denis Daneman

Dónal Denham

Alan Dershowitz

Leonidas Donskis

Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

Rabbi S. J. Feffer

Aleksandrs Feigmanis

Pinchos Fridberg

Berel Fried

Bernard Fryshman

Steinar Gil

Alexander Gogun

Ira Gold

Eleonora Groisman

Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius)

Kevin Hamilton

Clemens Heni

Leena Hietanen

Mikhail Iossel

Agnieszka Jablonska

Lord Janner of Braunstone

Peter Jukes

Sergey Kanovich

Leon Kaplan

Dovid Katz

Rafael Katz

Juris Kaža

Viktorija Kazlienė

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

Regina Kopilevich

Rachel Kostanian

Tzvi-Hirsh Kritzer

Faina Kukliansky

Andrius Kulikauskas

Arkady Kurliandchik

Aleksandr Kuzmin

Konrad Kwiet

Sid (Shnayer) Leiman

Dov Levin

Michael Levinas

Joseph Levinson

Miriam Kagan (Kahn) Lieber

Monica Lowenberg

Michael and Fausta Maass

Denis MacShane

Simon Malkes

Joseph Melamed

Dr. Rachel Margolis

Ivo Mosley

Julius Norwilla

Josifas Parasonis

Jacob Piliansky

Faye Ran

Shelly Rybak Pearson

Moss Robeson

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

Per Anders Rudling

Kamilė Rupeikaitė

Michael Samaras

Danutė Selčinskaja

Michael Shafir

Anna Shepherd

Janusz Skolimowski 

Ken Slade

Andres Spokoiny

Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė

Birutė Ušinskaitė

Rūta Vanagaitė

Geoff Vasil

Nida Vasiliauskaitė

Tomas Venclova

Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson

Arkadijus Vinokuras

Aleksandras Vitkus

Gert Weisskirchen

Olga Zabludoff

Lina Žigelytė

Markas Zingeris

Efraim Zuroff

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Deception Exposed: The New Documentary Film “Rewriting History”



F I L M

by Graeme Blundell

NOTE: This review appeared in today’s Australian. The original publication is available here and here.


This is one of those documentaries that is so compelling and so confronting it leaves you stunned, a little breathless.

It’s both a kind of contemporary international political thriller and a rigorously researched investigation into a piece of the past and the way it is remembered in the present. Or not remembered, when the truth of that past becomes politically problematic.

The film follows two slightly eccentric professors, the Australian Danny Ben-Moshe from the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University and Dovid Katz who taught Yiddish at Vilnius University, the oldest in Lithuania, as they confront the Lithuanian government.

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The Seventy Years Declaration



O P I N I O N

by Danny Ben-Moshe

This comment appeared today in the Jerusalem Post and is republished here with the author’s permission.

 

On January 20, 1942, the Nazi leadership gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin and adopted the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The Wannsee Conference, as this became known, from the suburb where the meeting was held, formalized the process that exterminated so much of European Jewry.

As we mark the seventieth anniversary of that 90-minute meeting in which fifteen people condemned millions to death, there are many crucial lessons to learn from the Holocaust. I wish to highlight two.

Firstly, the killing of a people begins not with violence, but through race-based hatred, progressing to institutionalized discrimination and only then culminating in murder. This is why antisemitism, racism and institutionalized discrimination must be addressed, for if left to fester the consequences can be tragic, severe and widespread.

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Litvaks and their Descendants Issue Public Letter Calling for Change in Lithuanian Government’s Holocaust Policies


 


Text of the public letter follows. Queries may be sent to Professor Danny Ben-Moshe at: Danny.Ben-Moshe@vu.edu.au.  UPDATES: Covered by JTA and the Jewish Chronicle.


We the undersigned Litvaks — Jews of Lithuanian origin and their direct and immediate descendants — hereby express:

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Lord Janner of Braunstone, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, The Great SLS About-Face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Text of the Letter Delivered to the Lithuanian Ambassador in London on 7 February 2011



Text of the letter delivered to the Lithuanian ambassador in London Monday morning 7 February 2011 by the Right Honourable Denis MacShane MP. The letter was drafted by Danny Ben-Moshe and evolved with input from the other signatories. Signatories include Lord Janner of Braunstone, Rabbi Barry Marcus of Central Synagogue, and Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London which hosted the main conference. PDF here. Background and further links to press coverage here.


H.E. Dr Oskaras Jusys

Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania
84 Gloucester Place
London W1U 6AU

7 February 2011

Dear Ambassador

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Documents, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Efraim Zuroff, EU, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Text of the Letter Delivered to the Lithuanian Ambassador in London on 7 February 2011