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JUMP TO MOST RECENT: On 23 Nov. 2021, Vilnius inaugurated a square named for the alleged 1941 Holocaust perpetrator…
YAKOV FAITELSON; LAURENCE WEINBAUM; FAINA KUKLIANSKY & ANDREW BAKER; DOVID KATZ; BRITISH PARLIAMENT MOTION
Tag Archives: Juozas Lukša (Daumantas)
Chronology: 2021 Dedicated to Glorifying Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Alleged Participant in June 1941 Kaunas Atrocities
Posted in American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Juozas Lukša, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views
Tagged AJC _ LJC, Dalius Stancikas, glorification of alleged Holocaust perpetrators, Grant Arthur Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Juozas Luksa, Juozas Luksa (Daumantas( + Holocaust, Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Kęstutis Skrupskelis, Ketutis Girdius, Laurence Weinbaum, Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), Lithuanian Seimas, Ruta Vanagaite, Smon Wiesenthal Center
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Painful Setback for Vilnius’s Standing in the West: Square is Named for a Brutal 1941 LAF Holocaust Collaborator
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Photo: Baltics.news
City Council Opens Brand New Square Named for Alleged 1941 Holocaust Murderer Juozas Lukša (“Daumantas”) in spite of pleas and testimony from the (late) last Holocaust Survivors who provided evidence. Macabre note: A few city council members told us off the record that placing the square away from the city center or old town represents “a grand compromise with the Jews”… Some have cited far-right demands for the square to be opposite the Jewish Community building.
See Defending History’s chronology of the 2021 debate, including links to Alex Faitelson’s book, British Parliament members’ 2012 early day motion, and 2021 calls from World Jewish Congress’s Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, the Jewish Community of Lithuania, and (very unusually) the American Jewish Committee. See essays by Defending History’s Dovid Katz and Evaldas Balčiūnas.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Juozas Lukša, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
Tagged glorification of Holocaust collaborators, Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Kaunas 1941 pogroms, Lithuania, Vilnius, Vilnius dark tourism
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In Lithuania, President’s Speech, New Monument, and Major Conference Glorify Alleged Participant in June 1941 Kaunas Atrocities Against Jewish Citizens
OPINION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | GENOCIDE CENTER | KAUNAS: 2022 CAPITAL OF EUROPEAN CULTURE
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VILNIUS—Not for the first time, the annual Jewish High Holiday period encompassing Rosh Hashonna and Yom Kippur have provided “optimal timing” for state-sponsored activities glorifying Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators. Lithuania’s Seimas (parliament) had declared that the year per se, 2021, would be dedicated to the memory of Juozas Lukša, identified by eyewitnesses as one of the barbaric butchers of Jews in the Lietukis Garage Massacre in Kaunas in June 1941, during the week when fascist “LAF” (Lithuanian Activist Front) Hitlerist thugs murdered thousands of Jewish neighbors before the Nazis had even taken control. In 2011 a motion in the British Parliament referred to testimony that Lukša was also involved in the beheading of Rabbi Zalmen Osovsky the same week.
“The hard-working people of Lithuania deserve much better than for their tax euros to be squandered by ultranationalist leaders on state glorification of Hitler accomplices.”
This week’s festivities included, on 4 September 2021, a speech by the president of Lithuania to honor Lukša, a brand new Lukša monument unveiled to in a village where he operated, with participation by the director general of the Genocide Center, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys. The monument was “consecrated” by a major bishop who holds the title “president of the Commission on the External Relations of the EU”.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Juozas Lukša, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Alex Faitelson, Andrew Baker, Arunas Bubnys, Faina Kukliansky, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust in Kaunas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jewish Agency, Joint Distribution Committee, Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Laurence Weinbaum, Yakov Faitelson
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Will Lithuania’s Parliament Really Name 2021 for Alleged Participant in LAF’s Kaunas Atrocities of June 1941?
OPINION | EVENTS | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | HISTORY | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED
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by Dovid Katz
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According to Lithuanian media reports, the nation’s parliament (Seimas) will be declaring the year 2021 to be dedicated to the memory of Juozas Lukša (Daumantas).
Let us assume for the sake of argument that the identification of Mr. Lukša (Luksha) as one of the brutal murderers of defenseless Jewish neighbors in an infamous photo of the Kaunas Garage Massacre of June 1941, best known from Joseph Melamed’s 1999 Crime and Punishment, published by the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, is erroneous. Then, that the reference to Mr. Lukša in the text (p. 38) in a listing of perpetrators (known from a half century of testimonies from the survivor community), and a photo with other alleged collaborators (p. 105), are likewise mistaken. And that the information on the Association’s website, posted during Mr. Melamed’s lifetime, is also in error.
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Let us even grant that there is no current courtroom-grade proof for the details of the following text from Holocaust survivor Alex (Alter) Faitelson, in his classic memoir The Truth and Nothing But the Truth: Jewish Resistance in Lithuania (Gefen Publishing House 2006, p. 34). It is a text that includes the author’s recollection from after the war: Lukša’s “photograph was found and shown to witnesses who were interrogated. They all confirmed his participation in the torture of Jews in the garage” (Lithuanian translation). Incidentally, in 1993, Mr. Faitelson was awarded a certificate of honor by Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas. He was not some “enemy of Lithuania” who spent his time making up stories about people. He was a Holocaust survivor, heroic member of the resistance and escape, and renowned memoirist.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Juozas Lukša, Dovid Katz, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged 23 June 1941, glorification of Holocaust collaborators, Holocaust in Lithuania, Juozas Lukša (Daumantas), Seimas (Lithuanian parliament)
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