Picture: Aleksandras Bosas, fifth from left, holding a sign saying “Juozas Krištaponis is the Shame of Ukmergė.” Photo: Gediminas Nemunaitis / ukzinios.lt.
O B I T U A R Y
Aleksandras Bosas, a respected Lithuanian poet, died unexpectedly on July 24, 2014. The widerDefending History community extends deepest condolences to the family and friends of our suddenly departed colleague, who is survived by his wife, Natalija, three sons and a daughter.
We have lost a courageously active literary voice against fascism and against the contemporary attempts at high levels to glorify fascism via posthumous honors for collaborators and local perpetrators of the Lithuanian Holocaust.
At the beginning of 2014 his book of poems dedicated to commemorating the Holocaust in Lithuania appeared. It is called Iš ten sugrįžtantiems (“For Those Who Returned from There”).
He last read his poetry publicly ten days before his death, on July 14. It is symbolically fitting for Bosas’s stature that the reading was held at a protest calling for the removal of a statue glorifying Holocaust perpetrator J. Krištaponis from a square in Ukmergė (Vilkomir).