anti-Semitism – Page 4 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Nazi Propagandist Leni Riefenstahl Had Polish Jews “Removed” from Set in 1939

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.

2024-08-292024-08-30

Man Arrested over Islamic Attack on French Synagogue

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.

2024-08-29

Lithuanian Jewish Community Statement on Genocide Center’s Newest Report on Kazys Škirpa

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.”

2024-08-262024-11-11

New York Times Reporter Implicated in Hit-List Targeting Australian Jews

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.

2024-08-222024-08-22

German Court Upholds Conviction of 99-Year-Old Nazi Concentration Camp Secretary

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.

2024-08-222024-08-22

Anti-Semitism in France: Can Lithuanian Jews Expect the Same?

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.

2024-08-132024-08-13

Israeli Prime Minister Addresses Both Houses of Congress

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.

2024-07-292024-07-29

Vandal Defaces Talmudic Sage Mural in Vilnius

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.

2024-07-22

Silvia Foti Honored by City of Beverly Hills

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.

2024-07-172024-07-17

French Jews Wary of Far Left’s Election Gains amid Surging Anti-Semitism

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.

2024-07-112024-07-12

Events in Kaunas Considered by Researchers: “Think about History, Understand Memory”

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.

2024-07-11

Marking the 80th Anniversary of the Liquidation of Shavl Ghetto

July 15 is the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the liquidation of the Šiauliai ghetto in 1944 when the surviving 3,000 Jews were transported to Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps, condemned to die there instead. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and both Šiauliai Jewish Communities invite the public to remember and pay honor to the victims of the Šiauliai ghetto, the men, women, children and elderly who were murdered this July 15.

Program

11:30 A.M. Gathering at Šiauliai ghetto gate monument at the intersection of Trakų and Ežero streets to remember the victims;

12:00 noon procession to Chaim Frenkl villa at Vilnaius street no. 74 with stopover on Righteous Gentiles Square;

12:30 P.M. Commemoration of victims at Frenkl villa.

Transportation: there will be minibus to carry passengers to the event leaving from the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 8:15 A.M. on July 15. Passengers must register before the event (see below).

Registration: Those wishing to attend are asked to please register before 4:00 P.M. on July 12 by calling Liuba Šerienė at (+370) 5 261 3003 or by sending an email to office@lzb.lt.

2024-07-102024-07-10

Lietūkis Garage Massacre

by Jurgita Šakienė, kaunodiena.lt

Thursday respects were paid in a schoolyard in Kaunas to the memory of around 50 men who were murdered brutally. These events of more than 80 years ago–the Lietūkis garage massacre–are among the most horrific in the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community gathered at the site of the tragedy.

“We must not forget,” Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas said.

Members of the Jewish community then went to the old Jewish cemeteries in Slobodka and the Žaliakalnis neighborhoods. It is believed the bodies of victims were brought to these locations for burial.

The mass execution was carried out on June 27, 1941, at what is now Miško street. The executioners publicly humilaited, tortured and then murdered victims who had been rounded up at random as a crowd looked on. Their selection was based on their Jewish ethnicity.

2024-07-01

Dainius Žalimas on Kazys Škirpa and Other Lithuanian Nazis

Dainius Žalimas served as the chief justice of the Constitutional Court of Lithuania from 2014 to 2021. He currently teaches. When protestors gathered to stop the city of Vilnius from taking down an illicit monument to wartime-era Lithuanian Nazi leader Kazys Škirpa, Lithuanian media went to Žalimas for commentary, because he had ruled in a case concerning Škirpa several years ago. The arrest of three protestors Sunday was followed by an unsanctioned but apparently announced protest in front of Vilnius City Hall Monday, where premade glossy posters were handed out to about 20 Škirpa fanatics, including one set of posters attacking Faina Kukliansky, the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, for allegedly dictating political decisions to Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas, who had called the Škirpa shrine, illegally installed on the Vilnius court building and former KGB palace, an act of “hooliganism,” which was later redacted by other members of the municipality to “vandalism.”

Dainius Žalimas posted to facebook regarding the legacy of Lithuanian Nazi leader Kazys Škirpa by quoting himself from an interview conducted by 15min.lt a year ago. This is an unofficial translation of his self-quote:

Some of us mark June 23 as a day of national pride and post photographs from that time of Lithuanian soldiers and residents joyfully greeting the Lithuanian insurgents and Germans, as well as photos of Soviet POWs being led through the streets. Yes, the Russian Bolshevik occupation had gone much too far for everyone. So there was no reason to feel pity for the occupiers. Under other circumstances we truly could’ve had something of which to be proud.

2024-06-272024-06-27

Vilnius Municipal Workers Take Down Škirpa Monument as Police Arrest Three Protestors

Photo by Orestas Gurevičius/ELTA

On Sunday afternoon city workers with police escort went to the Lithuanian Appellate and Lithuanian District Court courthouse in Vilnius where a shrine to Lithuanian Nazi Kazys Škirpa was installed without permission Friday in order to remove the illegal construction.

Over a dozen protestors attempted to stop the workers. They attempted to push the workers, who called for police backup, then several protestors locked arms to prevent access to the wall.

The police backup used force to push the protestors away. Protestors on the sidelines chanted “for shame,” “rascists” [sic] and “vatniks.”

Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas told the ELTA news agency he would appeal to law enforcement regarding the illegal construction. He called the installation of the shrine by members of the National Unification party an act of hooliganism.

Three men were arrested at the scene and later charged with administrative law offenses, namely, refusing to obey justified orders from police to disperse.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2024-06-252024-06-25

Lithuanian Jews Oppose Any Commemoration of Kazys Škirpa

Lithuanian Jewish Community press release

Wantonly, without any sort of permission, representative of the National Unification Party (Lithuanian: partija Nacionalinis susivienijimas) Vytautas Sinica has initiated the installation of a plaque commemorating Kazys Škirpa on the façade of the Vilnius District Court building. This is both an administrative and moral crime.

The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania has recognized the activities of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and the Provisional Government of Lithuania–both founded and led by Kazys Škirpa–as anti-Semitic.

“This is a monument to a man who led the organization which encouraged violence against Lithuanian citizens of a different ethnicity and fomented anti-Semitism. None of this is a subjective judgment or interpretation; these statements are confirmed by historical facts, sources and documents. The commemoration of this kind of person is a mistake and socially divisive,” the chairman of the Commission’s Nazi Crimes subcommittee and Millersville University professor emeritus Saulius Sužiedėlis said.

Other historians engaged in Holocaust research and international organizations are unanimous regarding the veracity of the aforementioned historical facts.

The Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania has issued as well an official finding of history which admits the actions of the LAF probably did encourage Lithuanians to become engaged in Holocaust crimes. The mass distribution of the LAF ideology led to the murder of 220,000 Jews living in Lithuania, or around 95% of the total Jewish population.

2024-06-232024-11-10

Learning about Jewish Life and Culture at the TOLI Seminar

All last week the LJC hosted the TOLI seminar where experts on Jewish life and culture from different Lithuanian institutions of learning come together to teach teachers about Litvak life before the Holocaust and about the Holocaust.

The TOLI institute founded by Olga Lengvel in New York and Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regime in Lithuania jointly held the seminar which this year was called “Learning from the Past, Action for the Future: Teaching the Holocaust and Human Rights.”

The seminar was attended by over 30 teachers and educators from throughout Lithuania. They included ethics, Lithuanian language and literature, English, geography, information theory and history teachers, as well as librarians and social workers who sacrificed their summer vacations to learn and improve their knowledge.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2024-06-212024-06-21

Holocaust Memorial Desecrated in Southern Lithuania

BNS reports yet another anti-Semitic attack in Lithuania, this time upon a Holocaust memorial in the cemetery in Senoji Varėna (Old Varėna) in southeast Lithuania.

Police from Alytus, Lithuania, told BNS they received a report of the vandalism just after noon on Monday from a local resident who saw it on Sunday evening as he was walking in the forest.

Alytus Police Department communications department director Kristina Janulevičienė told the news agency the vandalism was recorded as evidence and including destruction of an information stand, the partial destruction of a memorial obelisk and the placement of some sort of sticker forbidding people from placing stones at the memorial, a common Jewish tradition at grave sites.

“It doesn’t appear this was just done by children somehow. It’s a premeditated crime and act of vandalism. According to our information an obelisk marking the site was also damaged,” Varėna regional administration mayor Algis Kašėta told the 15min.lt website.

Alytus police head of communications Kristina Janulevičienė said police are currently on scene investigating.

2024-06-192024-06-19

Silvia Foti Speaking in Šiauliai

The Šiauliai Jewish Community invites you to a meeting and discussion with Silvia Foti.

Foti is a Lithuanian-American writer who lives in Chicago. She is also the granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi commander Jonas Noreika. When she began writing her family’s story, she approached it from the viewpoint of modern Lithuanian Holocaust denial, but quickly discovered her grandfather was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, and she began writing about that, alienating the Lithuanian public in North America and Lithuania who were raised to deny Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust.

Foti’s books have been published in English and Lithuanian and she has appeared on major media telling her story of the journey from Holocaust denial to the truth, including on the BBC’s Hard Talk interview program.

Everyone is welcome to attend and participate.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Friday, June 21
Place: Šiauliai Jewish Community, P. Višinskio street no. 24, Šiauliai

2024-06-192024-06-19

IDF Rescues 4 Hostages Including Noa Argamani

JTA–Israeli forces rescued four hostages held since October 7 in the central Gaza Strip, including Noa Argamani, the festival-goer who was filmed screaming as she was carried away by terrorists on a motorcycle.

In addition to Argamani, 26, the army said in a statement that Almog Meir Jan, 22; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 41, were rescued Saturday in the raid. All four were attending the Nova music festival on October 7 when Hamas terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people and abducted some 250, launching the war.

The army said special forces carried out the operation in Nuseirat in the center of the coastal territory. Arnon Zamora, a commander of the operation, was killed in the battle.

Hamas initially said “dozens” of Palestinians were killed in the operation. Media later quoted the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry as saying the number was more than 200. It did not report what proportion were civilians and what proportion were combatants.

2024-06-11