A music and dance play based on Jievaras Jasinskis’s “Symphony from the Jerusalem of the North” is returning to the stage for two performances.
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 19
Place: Alytus Town Theater, Alytus, Lithuania
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 24
Place: Saulė Concert Hall, Šiauliai, Lithuania
The Sabbath begins at 7:39 P.M. on Friday, September 6, and concludes at 8:50 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Monday, September 9, is also the Day of the Victims of the Holocaust and of Racial Violence in Slovakia, commemorating the day in 1941 when the puppet government of the Nazi protectorate of Slovakia issued a decree on the legal status of Jews in the country. This decree, known as the Jewish Codex, led to the deportation of Jews from the country, ultimately resulting in the murder of approximately 70,000 Slovak Jews.
BERLIN–Police in Munich say they thwarted a potential attack on Jewish targets Thursday after they shot and killed a man who was firing a rifle near the Israeli Consulate and a museum documenting Nazi Germany.
Police have not offered details on the suspect. Some German media outlets reported he was a juvenile from Austria police had previously investigated for alleged ties to Islamic extremism.
Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle verified the authenticity of cell-phone videos shared online which show a younger male carrying a rifle fitted with a bayonet before and during the shootout.
Netanyahu Dismisses Claims of Imminent Cease-Fire Deal
by Peter Aitken, Fox News, September 5, 2024
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that holding the Philadelphi Corridor is key to long-term peace
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined “Fox & Friends” to discuss his efforts to rescue hostages and maintain red lines with Hamas.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday morning dismissed reports negotiators were close to agreeing a cease-fire deal.
“It’s exactly inaccurate,” Netanyahu told “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade during an interview. “There’s a story, a narrative out there that there’s a deal out there … that’s just a false narrative.”
Netanyahu stressed that Israel has agreed to several deals proposed by the negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar but that each time the deal lapsed because Hamas “has consistently said no to every one of them.”
Full story and video here.
Last Nazi Hunter Efraim Zuroff Resigns from Simon Wiesenthal Center, Vows to Fight Anti-Semitism
by Eyal Green, Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2024
Efraim Zuroff, the last Nazi hunter, steps down after 38 years at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, pledging to continue fighting anti-Semitism.
Unofficially known as the last Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff has stepped down as director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office after 38 years, Zuroff announced September 3.
Efraim Zuroff was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948 and dedicated his life to identifying and bringing to justice Nazi war criminals who had evaded justice for decades. His interest in Holocaust studies began early, and after earning a degree in history from Yeshiva University, he moved to Israel in 1970 to work at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Former governor of South Carolina, US ambassador to the UN and Republican presidential candidate now pledging her support to candidate Donald Trump Nikki Haley posted a tweet on X decrying the current administration’s lack of clarity on Hamas following the recent mass-murder of 6 Israelis and promises by Hamas to murder remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza:
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen was executed in Gaza. Seven Americans are still being held hostage by the same terrorists who murdered Hersh.
It’s unacceptable. America should demand Hamas and their funders, Iran, release the hostages immediately. Harris and Biden need to acknowledge Hamas is a terrorist organization and treat them like, rather than pressuring Israel.
–Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) September 2, 2024
Vice-president and president of the US Senate Kamala Harris snubbed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed the US Congress assembled earlier this year. She has courted the pro-Hamas protestors at US universities and the large Muslim populations in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois in order to secure an electoral college victory in November. The Biden-Harris administration has also restricted weapons exports to Israel to pressure Netanyahu into a US-engineered peace plan with Hamas while publicly proclaiming support for Israel’s right to self-defense. The newly-elected Labour Government in the United Kingdom under prime minister Keir Starmer announced this week they were banning weapons sales to Israel as well.
The United States State Department recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1995 under the Bill Clinton administration.
Full story in Russian here.
On Tuesday the Vilnius Regional Court began hearing a criminal case against former MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis who is accused of inciting hatred. Prosecutor Justas Laucius speaking on behalf the state prosecution noted that in his facebook posts, the politician spoke disparagingly of people of Jewish origin, accusing them of committing a massacre in the village of Pirčiupiai and the “Holocaust of Lithuanians,” ELTA reports.
Žemaitaitis stated in court he is currently unemployed and registered with the Employment Service. He also said he is currently a candidate for parliamentary elections to be held in the fall.
Prosecutor Laucius read out the indictment, indicating that Žemaitaitis is accused of inciting hatred towards persons of Jewish nationality, mocking persons of Jewish nationality and publicly approving of international crimes, denying them or grossly belittling them.
Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda says he has doubts concerning a proposal by EU foreign minister Josep Borrell to impose sanctions on members of the Israeli government. According to the Lithuanian head of state, EU member states do not have a common approach to the conflict in the Middle East.
“Fanning discord is bad, no matter where it comes from. I have serious doubts about Mr. Borrell’s initiative. It seems to me that he himself does not believe in the success of this initiative,” Nausėda told reporters on Monday.
“The EU is united by different states with different approaches to this conflict,” he stressed.
Last week Borrell proposed the 27 EU member states impose sanctions on Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Courtesy delfi.lt
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi discovered in Gaza tunnel; families forum urges protests; autopsy finds all 6 had gunshot wounds
The bodies of six hostages abducted alive by Hamas on October 7 were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah overnight, shortly after they were murdered by terrorists, the Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday.
The hostages were Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27.
Film suggests Nazis’ lead propagandist had role in 1939 massacre
Letter in Leni Riefenstahl archive appears to claim her set instructions led to deaths of Polish Jews, says director
A new documentary on the Nazis’ favorite film-maker and lead propagandist Leni Riefenstahl suggests she was a direct witness to murderous crimes of the Third Reich she later claimed to have known nothing about and might even have contributed to one atrocity herself.
The film Riefenstahl which premieres at the Venice film festival at the end of August also claims the propagandist admired the party and its henchmen until her death at 101 in 2003, a sentiment which ran counter to her insistence she was not signed up to the Nazi cause.
Written and directed by Andres Veiel, the documentary is the first to have had full access to Riefenstahl’s estate. It gives fresh details about claims that the film-maker was witness to one of the first massacres of Polish Jews while briefly working as a war reporter.
Riefenstahl followed Adolf Hitler to Poland at the start of the second world war in September of 1939 and saw the atrocity take place in Końskie, a town in south-central Poland.
The iinister says officers came under fire during operation; images show suspect wearing Palestinian flag as he set fire to police cars, synagogue doors; 2 associates also detained
LA GRANDE MOTTE, France (AFP)–Police arrested a man suspected of setting fires and causing an explosion at a synagogue in southern France on Saturday in what officials suspect was a terror attack, the country’s interior minister said.
“The suspected perpetrator of the criminal fires at the synagogue has been detained,” interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on X, adding that officers who made the arrest came under fire.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community representing 32 Lithuanian and foreign Jewish organizations categorically rejects the latest report and conclusion by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania regarding Kazys Škirpa.
We note that a ban on propagating totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies has been in force in Lithuania since May of 2023. Under this law symbols of totalitarianism and authoritarianism–statues, street names, names of squares and other of other public locations–cannot be instituted, and those which are currently in existence must be removed from public space. The LJC is convinced Kazys Škirpa, whose publicly-made anti-Semitic statements and incitement to get rid of Jews gave rise to a wave of violence with such tragic results, should not be honored. Statues and commemorative plaques in his honor are a gigantic insult to the memory and relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. All the more so bearing in mind that until now Lithuania has not established a national memorial commemorating the more than 200,000 victims of the Holocaust, our fellow citizens. Neither is there any monument paying honor to the heroism of Lithuania’s rescuers of Jews who risked their own lived and those of their families.
The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania set up by the president of Lithuania has recognized the activities of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Provisional Government, both led by Škirpa, as anti-Semitic. Chairman of the Commission’s Nazi Crimes Subcommittee Millersville University professor Saulius Sužiedelis stated: ” This is a statue to a man who led an organization which promoted violence against Lithuanian citizens of other ethnicity and which incited anti-Semitism. This is not a subjective judgment or interpretation, all of these statements are founded on historical facts, sources and documents.”
Natasha Frost admits she shared private chats from a post-October 7 WhatsApp group with 1 person, and says she didn’t intend what followed; 600 members used the chat to talk about surging anti-Semitism in Australia
The New York Times said Friday it had taken “appropriate action” against its reporter after it came to light Melbourne-based Natasha Fronst had leaked private details from a WhatsApp group in which some 600 Australian Jewish creative workers had sought support amid surging anti-Semitism.
Natasha Frost told the Wall Street Journal she had shared the information with one person outside the group and had not intended for it to be widely disseminated.
Frost, whose New York Times bio page still says she writes for the newspaper’s Europe Morning Briefing newsletter, downloaded some 900 pages of WhatsApp messages from the group earlier this year, according to a WSJ report last week.
BERLIN–Germany’s highest court has upheld the guilty verdict of a 99-year-old woman convicted as an accessory to mass murder at a Nazi concentration camp.
German Jewish leaders applauded the decision announced Tuesday by the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe.
“It is not about putting her behind bars for the rest of her life,” said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “It is about a perpetrator having to answer for her actions and acknowledge what happened and what she was involved in.”
Irmgard Furchner was secretary to Paul-Werner Hoppe, the SS commander of the Nazi German concentration camp Stutthof outside Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland. She was convicted in 2022 as accessory to more than 10,000 murders which were committed there during her employment from June 1, 1943, to April 1, 1945. She was also convicted of attempted murder in five cases. Dozens of survivors testified at the trial.
The judges agreed that Furchner through her work knowingly supported the murder of 10,505 prisoners by gassing, by terrible living conditions in the camp, by transfer to the Auschwitz death camp and by forced death marches at the end of the war.
Full article here.
by Arkadijus Vinokuras, LRT.lt
The goal of the Islamists and their supporters in Europe is to turn Jewish life in Europe into hell. Does this goal have something to do with Israel? It would be as if Lithuanians living abroad were persecuted for decisions made by Lithuanian politicians.
Meanwhile, an anti-Semitic party has been resurrected in Lithuania led by the anti-Semite Remigijus Žemaitaitis. We must note all of that party’s members who have donned the brown shirt have automatically become anti-Semites because they now the stances of their leader.
Reactions? Yes, we’ve seen them. Whether he was invited or not, he participated at the inauguration of re-elected president Gitanas Nausėda. It seems the president’s advisor, the former right-hand-man of the anti-Semitic and homophobic owner of the Respublika newspaper, performed his dirty work, but more about that later. So while there are no questions about the aims of the Islamists, there are many questions about the goals of the democratic West.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
The following is the full text of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the United States Congress assembled on July 25, 2024, as issued by his office.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson,
Senator Ben Cardin,
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,
Senators,
Members of Congress,
Distinguished guests,
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for giving me the profound honor of addressing this great citadel of democracy for the fourth time.
We meet today at a crossroads of history. Our world is in upheaval. In the Middle East, Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.
For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together. Because when we stand together, something very simple happens. We win. They lose.
And my friends, I came to assure you today of one thing: we will win.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Like December 7th, 1941, and September 11th, 2001, October 7th is a day that will forever live in infamy.
It was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. It began as a perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky. Thousands of young Israelis were celebrating at an outdoor music festival. And suddenly, at 6:29 a.m., as children were still sleeping soundly in their beds in the towns and kibbutzim next to Gaza, suddenly heaven turned into hell. Three thousand Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel. They butchered 1,200 people from 41 countries, including 39 Americans. Proportionately, compared to our population size, that’s like 20 9/11s in one day. And these monsters, they raped women, they beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. They dragged 255 people, both living in dead, into the dark dungeons of Gaza.
The Vilnius municipality’s webpage madeinvilnius.lt reports a mural depicting a Jewish scholar called “The Sage” was defaced by graffiti recently. The mural is located in the Vilnius Old Town adjacent to what was the city’s Jewish quarter for a time and the Jewish ghetto instituted by the Nazis.
Reporter Šarūnas Černiauskas wrote about the vandalism on facebook: “Something nasty happened. The most known work in the ‘The Walls Remember’ project dedicated to preserving the historical memory of Lithuanian Jews, the mural ‘The Sage,’ was intentionally damaged. The people who did this obviously wanted to ruin the painting. I think this smacks of anti-Semitism. I went there today, recorded it and filed a complaint with the police.”
Černiauskas called on members of the public to come forward to police concerning the act of vandalism. He also called for any video footage from adjacent cameras to be sent to him and police.
The mural was heavily damaged. The mural “Street Musicians” in the same series was defaced with the name “Ivan,” presumably a pejorative for “Russian” rather than a tagger’s name.
Full story in Lithuanian with photographs here.
Beverly Hills, probably the highest concentration of wealth, success and power in the world, honored Lithuanian citizen Silvia Foti on Monday, July 15, 2024. The award was signed by all members of the city council.
In deciding to honor Foti the city council considered the following facts:
Silvia Foti holds dual citizenship in America and Lithuania. She has always remained loyal and patriotic to both countries. As a devout Catholic, she has stalwartly represented the finest ideals of honesty, integrity and compassion.
Silvia Foti is the granddaughter of the genocidal Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika who is continuously and fraudulently honored by the Lithuanian government as a national hero of Lithuania and a rescuer of Jews.
Socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon has vowed to recognize a Palestinian state; 92% of French Jews say his party has contributed to rising anti-Semitism
In a surprise outcome, French voters rejected a far-right party with anti-Semitic roots–but elevated a left-wing alliance that has faced anti-Semitism allegations of its own.
The country’s most prominent far-left politician, meanwhile, vowed in his victory speech to push to recognize a Palestinian state.
No party won a majority in the second round of France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, in which all 577 seats of the National Assembly were in play. According to Le Monde, the left-wing New Popular Front alliance won 182 seats while the centrist Ensemble, backed by president Emmanuel Macron, won 168.
“We will have a prime minister from the New Popular Front,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French far Left leader, posted on X Sunday night. “We will be able to decide many things by decree. On the international level, we will have to agree to recognize the State of Palestine.”
Full story here.
by Jurgita Šakienė, kauno.diena.lt
An international academic conference to mark the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto has begun at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Called “Think about History, Understand Memory,” the conference includes researchers from Lithuania and abroad who will present Jewish life before and during the Holocaust through the lens of history, politics, social sciences, the theater and the arts.
“This anniversary is a powerful reminder of our collective responsibility to understand memory and to insure the lessons of the past inform our present and future,” Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein said during her speech opening the conference. Also giving welcome speeches were US ambassador Kara McDonald and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas.
Germany’s ambassador Cornelius Zimmerman in his speech said, among other things, “It’s difficult to understand how these unspeakably brutal things could have happened. But they happened. I feel sadness, remorse and shame. It’s crucial to remember everything in order to prevent this from happening again.”
Full story in Lithuanian here.