Tag Archives: Maceva

Did State-Manipulated NGO in Lithuania, Called on to ‘Fix’ Germany’s ‘Jewish Partisan Fort Problem’ Even Mention to the German Soldiers the Jewish Fort Remnants Abutting Panzerbrigade 45?

Posted on 18 August 2026 by Defending History

OPINION | MEDIA WATCH | LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | HISTORY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Appreciation is due to the Lithuanian NGO Maceva, and both members of its management team, and the German Army’s new Panzer Brigade in Lithuania (Panzerbrigade 45, Litautenbrigade) for their new joint effort to clean and maintain old Jewish gravestones, as reported, inter alia, on Facebook. This is a noble endeavor.

It is a laudable activity for both Maceva and for the German soldiers. Cleaning pre-Holocaust gravestones of a people of whom none exist anymore in those places is in itself a valuable indirect lesson in the meaning of “genocide” on the ground rather than just in the realm of academic and political debate of the day.

But there is a catch.

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Posted in Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Did State-Manipulated NGO in Lithuania, Called on to ‘Fix’ Germany’s ‘Jewish Partisan Fort Problem’ Even Mention to the German Soldiers the Jewish Fort Remnants Abutting Panzerbrigade 45?

Back in the News: Remnants of Lithuania’s Last anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort, Next Door to New German Army Brigade (Panzerbrigade 45)

Posted on 15 April 2026 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE]

JEWISH FORT IN THE FOREST | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | DR. RACHEL MARGOLIS | BLAMING THE VICTIMS

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It was known as “the Jewish fort” (or “the Yiddish speaking fort”) within the network of anti-Nazi Soviet partisan forest enclaves (the only de facto resistance to Hitler’s occupation of Lithuania, then in alliance with Great Britain, the United States, and the other Allies). It’s 100 or so occupants were all Vilna Ghetto escapees whose families were murdered and who went on to survive, and to become decorated heroes of the free world in the anti-Nazi resistance.

Then, after the rise of free, democratic Lithuania in 1990/1991, they become major educators whose last wish was that the Jewish fort’s remnants be preserved.

Whether coincidence or by sheer majesty of history (or: Higher Powers), the beloved remnants of the Jewish partisan fort have ended up abutting the massive new training ground of the German Army’s 45th Panzer Brigade arriving in Lithuania in the democratic context of NATO and the free world. It is a magnificent opportunity for Germany, and the thousands of young troops being sent “back east” to be educated and educate others about the Holocaust in Lithuania and beyond. Including — the extraordinary saga of Jewish resistance.

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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024) shows us where she and 99 other Jewish escapees from certain death in the Vilna Ghetto lived and fought the Nazis in this underground fort in the forest now right next door to the German Army’s new Brigade in Lithuania. Click on image for 2007 video. Fania explains that this was known as “the Jewish fort” within the wider partisan movement, and is so known in Holocaust resistance history. Yiddish was the everyday language of its 100 or so occupants.

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The new German Army 45th Brigade in Lithuania is right next door to the fort in the Rūdninkai forest (Yiddish: Rudnítsker vald)

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Posted in Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Back in the News: Remnants of Lithuania’s Last anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort, Next Door to New German Army Brigade (Panzerbrigade 45)

Gurevich Explains How Kukliansky, Levin, Žakas, and Kanovich Control 40% of Votes in “Kangaroo Election”

Posted on 22 May 2017 by Defending History

OPINION  |  VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS  |  DEMOCRACY  |  GOOD WILL FOUNDATION  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius), candidate for the leadership of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, today issued a statement on his public Facebook page inviting members of the community to participate in the electoral conference for chairperson of the Vilnius Jewish Community, to be held this Wednesday evening 24 May 2014 6 PM (18:00) at the Karolina Hotel in Vilnius. His statement, in Lithuanian, reminds readers that the recent attempts to cancel the conference (whose date was democratically voted on by a clear majority of Vilnius Jewish Community Board members) would result in the application of the “new rules” decided on in the middle of the current campaign that would effectively disenfranchise 2,200 Vilnius Jews by recounting their votes from the present 22 or so (via the longstanding formula of 100 people = one vote) to one vote, while each of the elite power brokers in the chairperson’s circle (not all of whom live in Lithuania) would in effect have the votes to decide the entire future of the Jewish community, resulting in a tragic undermining of the future of the actual living Jewish people in Lithuania. To make matters worse, various of these “machers” have two or three votes each.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl", Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gurevich Explains How Kukliansky, Levin, Žakas, and Kanovich Control 40% of Votes in “Kangaroo Election”

Vilnius Jews “Shocked” by Maneuver to “Rig the Community’s Elections”

Posted on 21 April 2017 by Defending History

OPINION  |  VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS  |  DEMOCRACY  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—Interviews by several Defending History staffers with several dozen members of Vilnius’s Jewish community over the past several days have turned up what seems to be a widespread sense of (citing terms that recurred frequently in the conversations) “disappointment” or “shock” at the “unbelievable changing of the rules of an election in the middle of the campaign.” (Such mini-surveys are not scientific, and a professional survey of today’s Jewish community on a number of issues is a critical desideratum here.)

The change seems to be in the cause of in effect disenfranchising the actual living Jews of Lithuania by suddenly decoupling the numbers of living, resident Jews from votes cast for the leadership of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, for which elections are scheduled, as of today, for May 28th (for recent developments see the DH section on Vilnius Jewish Life). A number of those interviewed mentioned the role of the “Good Will Foundation” that allocates funding for the community’s administration, including elections, from the government finance provided as restitution for prewar communal religious Jewish property. Some of its allocations have been highly controversial.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Šeduva (Sheduva, Shádeve, Shádov) and its "Museum of the Lost Shtetl" | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius Jews “Shocked” by Maneuver to “Rig the Community’s Elections”

Who Has Yet to Express a Public View on the Wisdom of Planting a Convention Center in the Middle of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius?

Posted on 23 July 2015 by Defending History

VILNIUS—Public opposition to the placing of a twenty-five million dollar convention center in the heart of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery has come from an array of individuals and organizations, in Vilnius and internationally.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Has Yet to Express a Public View on the Wisdom of Planting a Convention Center in the Middle of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius?

Posted on 9 May 2013 by Defending History

Lithuanian Anti-Fascist Group Mounts Protest in Kaunas Against Glorification of 1941 LAF Killers on Anniversary of the Day the Killing Started

Courageous Antifa Lietuva banner reads: “Real heroes rescued people instead of killing them. Remember the victims of the Holocaust”

Milan Chersonski was there. His report on the event. His take: “Let the world know that not everyone in Lithuania tolerates the distortion of history.” 

Milan Chersonski (second from right) is not the only one in town taking pictures of the banner and the handful of demonstrators. Police photographed anti-fascist participants and asked names and addresses (as last February).

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The group of courageous demonstrators at the Lietukis Garage memorial, in a city-center courtyard in Kaunas

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Milan Chersonski walks with the small group of Antifa Lietuva demonstrators who marched the same route though Kaunas old town that throngs of neo-Nazis take each year on February 16th. This year the neo-Nazis’ banner had honored the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister on whose watch the  Lithuanian Holocaust began.

MORE IMAGES HERE

 Antifa Lietuva’s report on the event; on Facebook

MEANWHILE, GENOCIDE CENTER’S MEMBER OF GOV’S RENEWED “RED-BROWN COMMISSION” WAS BUSY SANITIZING THE LAF (AND DISMISSING THE  HISTORIC EVIDENCE OF “ISRAELI” SCHOLARS) IN NATIONAL MEDIA. Some of the sources.

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Could there really be a “June 23rd Street” in Vilnius?

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Background: Evaldas Balčiūnas; Milan Chersonski; Section on collaborators glorified. Honors for collaborators in public spaces.  Reburial of 2012.  Historical readings.  More on June 1941.

INTERNATIONAL PETITION

Milan Chersonski (Vilnius):

Rehabilitation of the Past as a Tool in Modern Politics

Kazys Skirpa Street in Kaunas

Street name in Kaunas for the head of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (in Berlin) whose hateful radio addresses incited mobs to mass murder.

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The lecture hall at Vytautas Magnus University named for the actual Nazi puppet prime minister Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) who signed papers confirming German orders for sending the Jews of his city (KAUNAS) to a concentration camp, and for incarcerating all the rest in the ghetto. The 2012 reburial saga.

Leena Hietanen (Tallinn) on the bestseller novel Purge:

Double Genocide: A Literary Jackpot?

Cover of the Novel 'purge'

Background: Sections on Double Genocide and Collaborators Glorified; Yitzhak Arad’s paper on the academic evolution of the revisionist paradigm; Efraim Zuroff’s “The Equivalency Canard”; articles by Danny Ben-Moshe and Dovid Katz.
SEE ALSO: Books

Litvak Holocaust Survivors: Betrayed Again?

State-sponsored “red-brown commission” in Vilnius posts new list of members

Commission has caused concern among survivors themselves: Yitzhak Arad, Pinchos Fridberg, Dov Levin, Joseph Melamed, Basheva Ran. A decade and a half of issues.

Still no apology to commission’s former (& founding) member Yitzhak Arad after massive state-sponsored defamation

In 2013, Commission defames Vilnius survivor Pinchos Fridberg on its website, and uses conference in Riga to attack Defending History. Commission member from the Genocide Center uses 23 June 2013 in newest attempt to whitewash 1941 LAF collaborators and perpetrators, in defiance of the history. Accidental omission? His entry on Commission members’ list (with no hint of “completely separate subcommissions”) omits the “detail” that he is director of the “Genocide and Resistance Research Department” at the Genocide Center… 

MORE HERE

 FILM

Screening tour of Rewriting History in the UK (London July 10th 2013), presented by Danny Ben-Moshe. RELATED: US tour.

Documentary films by Richard Bloom (USA) and Christian Carlsen (Germany), both scheduled for release on 23 Sept 2013. SEE ALSO: Film listings and Film & Theatre section.

 The Clock is Ticking…

A Time for Loyalty to Litvak (and All) Holocaust Survivors

TO EVERY THING THERE IS A TIME UNDER THE SUN…

A Need for De-Obfuscation?

Newest Word for Holocaust Revisionism in Eurospeak? “ISTME” (pronounced Is-it-me?) comes under “Science and Technology”!

Is the EU Again Being Bamboozled with “Double Genocide”? Are fine scholars again unwittingly instrumentalized for DG?

More red-equals-brown movement dissemination, now via “Science and Technology”? Orwellian concoctions to downgrade the Holocaust and stifle debate include: “Reconciliation of European Histories”, “Platform of European Memory”, “principle of non-discrimination of victimhood” and now, under “European cooperation in science and technology” (!) a brand new “Euro-classic”: In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME)…

Will it be a fair and balanced conference in Cracow on 16-18 Sept. 2013? Will there be critical papers on the Prague Declaration (and SYD), Double Genocide? state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators (in Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine)? arbitrary redefinition of genocide? attempts to incriminate survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance? “red-brown” laws restricting free speech in Hungary and Lithuania?

RELATED: Was Montero instrumentalized in 2011? When the EU “just said No”  (2010) [background]; EU section.

Shrines for Nazis, in the EU

ambrazeviciusInternational Petition Tops 750 Mark; Progress Seen, as Organizers of Kaunas “Religious Heritage” Conference Reported to Seek Alternative Venue; Vytautas Magnus University Continues to Honor City’s 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Presided over Initiation of the Lithuanian Holocaust

He was honored by the central government too in a fiasco including Kaunas’s university. Its leading historian told the press that reburying the fascist underlines “the drama of Lithuanian history” and lamented that administrators were “afraid of getting hit over the head by the Jews with a club.” The city’s Jewish population, once over 30,000, is now several hundred, close to statistical zero.

Defending History urges people of conscience politely to refrain from entering the building until the shrines are removed.

Kaunas June July 1941

What was going on in Kaunas (Kovno) during the tenure of the June-August 1941 “Provisional Government”? Here, white-armbanders loyal to the gov take women citizens to humiliation and death because they are Jewish…

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Related: Evaldas Balčiūnas on a military academy named for someone with Nazi-era biographical gaps…..

zemaitis military academy

28-30 May 2013

Fireworks in Jerusalem

Times of Israel coverage by Raphael Ahren. Comment by: Abraham Foxman, Clemens Heni, Robert Wistrich, Efraim Zuroff. More debate.

27-28 May 2013

Fireworks in Riga

On the Watch, In Real Time

DEFENDING HISTORY MONITORS THE EAST EUROPEAN EXPORT OF REVISIONIST HOLOCAUST HISTORY, ATTEMPTS AT GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL COLLABORATORS, AND THE ACCOMPANYING RACISM, ANTISEMITISM AND HOMOPHOBIA

CHECKING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE:

Australia, Canada, EU, Israel, South Africa, UK, USA

DEFENDING HISTORY SUPPORTS HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, RESISTANCE HEROES AGAINST NAZISM, EAST EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES, YIDDISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE; WITH EMPHASIS ON THE LITVAK CULTURE, LEGACY, HISTORY AND FUTURE

MISSION    MEDIA    NEWS    LITVAK CULTURE & TOURISM

Rewriting History  ◊  More documentaries  ◊  SYD  ◊  Donate  ◊  Facebook  ◊  Neo-Nazis target DefendingHistory.com  ◊  But many courageous citizens stand up with courage

22 May 2013

Admirers, in Vilnius, say ‘Happy Birthday’ on Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky’s 91st

Veteran of the Vilna Jewish partisans, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky answers questions from an international audience that came to celebrate her 91st birthday (at the Jewish Community of Lithuania, in the room dedicated to veterans of the Jewish resistance against the Nazis). She was one of the victims, in recent years, of local prosecutors’ kangaroo “war crimes investigations” against Lithuanian Jews who survived the Holocaust precisely because they joined the anti-Nazi resistance.

Brantsovsky set the tone for public resistance early on, in May 2008, in a Jerusalem Post interview, concurrent with the Wiesenthal Center’s letter to the then Lithuanian ambassador in Israel, and followed by the Jewish community’s own protest. The campaign of defamation has extended to some of the last Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, including Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Prof. Sara Ginaite, Dr. Rachel Margolis, and attorney Joseph Melamed, head of the world’s last active associations of Litvak survivors. There has been massive international reaction including the Australian made documentary film Rewriting History, and the American Defending Holocaust History (scheduled for 23 Sept 2013 release).

HELP SAVE THE FOREST FORT WHERE FANIA YOCHELES AND ANOTHER 100 JEWISH SURVIVORS OF THE VILNA GHETTO FOUGHT THE NAZIS

There is still time for Lithuania’s government to end the six hundred year pre-Holocaust sharing of space in the spirit of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the happier note of reconciliation via public apologies to the defamed Jewish partisans (who continue to be defamed in new publications, e.g. “Intermarium” and on Wikipedia etc).

14-15 May 2013

Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw, Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”

Not one presentation on EU states’ glorification of local Holocaust perpetrators (including street names and reburials of Nazi collaborators; commemorations in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania); criminalization of debate; Holocaust Obfuscation; Double Genocide; distortionist “genocide museums” and “genocide centers”; state accusations against survivors; failure to seriously prosecute Nazi war criminals and the need for study of underlying narrative-revising motives; red-brown commission’s campaign against a courageous Holocaust survivor in 2013; issues with the Prague Declaration; the Seventy Years Declaration.

Survivor circles express quiet regret that DC’s Holocaust Museum (USHMM) unwittingly supports revisionist agenda by legitimizing, via simple participation, another Double Genocide event in Europe. At earlier events, USHMM was one of an array of “useful Western legitimizers” but this time around it is the only one.

9 May 2013

Jewish Community of Lithuania Honors Veterans of the War Against Hitler

Jewish children lead each of the surviving Jewish veterans of World War II to the rapturous welcome of a huge crowd at the Jewish Community of Lithuania’s headquarters in central Vilnius.

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On the Preservation of Lithuania’s Old Jewish Cemeteries

Posted on 5 May 2013 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Joseph Levinson

 

Joseph Levinson (Josifas Levinsonas) in Vilnius, 2013. Courtesy of the Levinson family.

On April 25th 2013 an event dedicated to the recording, maintenance and preservation of old Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania was held at the Vilnius premises of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. It was organized by the NGO “Maceva” and chaired by one of the NGO’s founders and leading figures, himself a resident of Brussels.

The April 25th evening in Vilnius went “smoothly” until a veteran member of the Jewish Community politely pointed out that much of the work that the NGO was taking credit for and presented as a miracle dropped from the heavens had in fact been carried out many years earlier by the very Jewish Community in whose premises the event was held. There was a moment of shock  when the event’s chairman reacted by saying “There are different kinds of Jews!” instead of thanking the senior member of our community for his well-intentioned, polite and factual corrective remarks from the floor.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Joseph Levinson, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , | Comments Off on On the Preservation of Lithuania’s Old Jewish Cemeteries

April 2013

Posted on 9 April 2013 by Defending History

Events in April 2013

ISGAP Seminars in North America

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Landsbergis. Then and Now.

Posted on 16 July 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

 

Vytautas Landsbergis is one of the giants of the late twentieth century. Along with Poland’s Lech Wałęsa and then-Czechoslovakia’s Václav Havel, Landsbergis led his people from foreign domination to freedom and democracy. Nothing these gentlemen might later on have said or done to their own legacies, particularly in the subsequent century, can detract from their singular achievements in contributing to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the freedom of the subjugated nations on its western periphery.

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Posted in Double Games, Dovid Katz, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Legacy of 23 June 1941, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roma | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Landsbergis. Then and Now.