Opinion | The Last Jewish Partisan Fort | History | Blaming the Victims | Germany
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Top: One of the collapsing bunkers at the Vilna Jewish Partisans’ fort in the forest just outside the new German Panzerbrigade 45 training grounds (photo: DefendingHistory.com). Bottom: Panzerbrigade forces just down the road (photos: Panzerbrigade 45).
Editor’s note: The text below is the final English version of a statement by a veteran German public figure. It was approved by the author, then withdrawn on the day scheduled for publication, May 11, 2026. In an accompanying email, the author explained that he had been persuaded to withdraw his statement by an eminent retired Lithuanian parliamentarian who “is ready to ask the Jewish authorities, in what condition the resistance bunker now is actually,” after which he would be “ready to convince the political leaders in Berlin, that the process of renovation could start very soon.”
In light of the fort’s continuing and rapid deterioration, the absence of any such remedy, and Panzerbrigade 45’s failure even to mention the fort in its extensive public relations material, we have decided to publish the statement for the historical record while preserving the distinguished author’s anonymity. Also for the record, Defending History’s first private written communication on the matter to the German Embassy in Vilnius was dated May 6, 2025, more than a year earlier. From June 2026 onward, the issue was taken up by outside media, including JTA, Der Spiegel, and Berliner Zeitung, further disconfirming any suggestion that this could or would be solved if only it does not become a public issue. In any case, it is a wholly public and transparent matter deserving to see the light of day in the public (and global) square. News on the issue continues to appear in Defending History’s section on the subject.
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This time it is different. German soldiers are being welcomed today by so many of the Lithuanian people in a unique and inspiring new role: to assist in securing the freedom of the Lithuanian people. That means, to defend Lithuania’s democratically based nationhood. To do so with conviction, the German soldiers now coming to Lithuania to populate the Bundeswehr’s new Forty-Fifth Panzer Brigade (Litautenbrigade) in the framework of NATO, must remain deeply aware, every single day, winter and summer, autumn and spring, what it was that German Nazi forces and their local collaborators destroyed in Lithuania in 1941, and in the years 1941 to 1944.