History of the Jews in Lithuania

Genocide Center: Independent Holocaust Research Is Criminal and Unconstitutional in Lithuania

Culminating a series of letters back and forth between LA-based Litvak Grant Gochin and the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania–Lithuania’s state-sponsored arbiter of all historical truth–the Genocide Center posted a notice on their website saying Gochin’s questions to them might be criminal and in violation of the Lithuanian constitution.

The Genocide Center neglected to post Gochin’s actual letters and independent historical research, content to post only answers to the questions they cherry-picked and deemed worthy of refutation.

Note that Gochin himself says he never brought up Telšiai archbishop Vincentas Borisevičius and that the Genocide Center inserted him into their notification out of the blue.

Here is a translation of their notification with a link at the end to the original text in Lithuanian:

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The Doors Open: An Installation to Remember Jewish Merkinė

The Doors Open: An Installation to Remember Jewish Merkinė

The town of Merkinė, Lithuania, held a big celebration August 17 and 18, marking the 660th anniversary of the first mention of the town in the historical sources and the 450th anniversary of the town receiving autonomous Magdeburg charter rights. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Fayerlakh group were invited to the celebration.

The project “Doors Are Opening” was dedicated to commemorating life in Merkinė during the period between the two world wars, when the majority of the population was Jewish. Before the Holocaust Jews accounted for about 80% of inhabitants. The old Jewish doors were donated for the celebration.

“It’s normal not to want to talk about the painful past, but it’s abnormal if we try to live our lives as if none of those experiences ever even existed,” Mindaugas Černiauskas, the director of the Merkinė Regional History Museum, said.

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European Day of Jewish Culture Events in Vilnius

European Day of Jewish Culture Events in Vilnius

Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter, a lost tradition where every Friday evening the Jewish family sat down at the dinner table together, lit the candles, prayed and broke bread, followed by a day of rest on Saturday, and the beginning of the new week on Sunday.

Let’s rediscover the ferment, history, tastes, smells and melodies of the Jewish Quarter on the European Day of Jewish Culture.

Program here.

Registration here.

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Jews of Merkinė

Jews of Merkinė

Merkinė Jewish school, ca. 1928-1930

by Mindaugas Černiauskas

“Decades have passed since I left you, Merkinė. You are always on my mind. Every day I walk your small crowded streets in my thoughts. I know it’s not real, but I haven’t learned to come to terms with the fact the terror of the Holocaust was also in my town.” –Dorit Blatshtein, refugee from Merkinė.

Exactly 78 years ago the Jews of Merkinė were marched to the sand pits in Kukumbalis forest and left there for the ages powerless and desecrated. The introduction of the book “Mano senelių ir prosenelių kaimynai žydai” [My Grandparents’ and Great-Granparents’ Jewish Neighbors] published in 2003 contains the line that “the destruction of the Jews of Lithuania was so blood-curdling and unexpected, so cynical and public, accomplished right here in view of all other residents, that it essentially touched in one way or another every member of society.”

It’s difficult not to agree with this, as it is difficult not to agree with the idea that traumatic experience is often pushed into the subconscious. It’s clear experience doesn’t disappear and can become a festering wound and neurosis, especially when we view history based on idealized versions of national history where we only want to see examples of goodness, beauty and harmony which make us proud.

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Zachor, Professor Landsbergis

by Grant Arthur Gochin

How did it come to this? Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, first head of dtate of Lithuania after liberation from the Soviet Union and founding father of the country’s Conservative Party (Homeland Union), putting himself squarely at the forefront of defending the hero status of Holocaust perpetrators and Nazi collaborators in Lithuania?

Landsbergis has gone on record calling Vilnius mayor Remigijus Simasius delusional for removing a plaque honoring the Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika from the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, a step called for years ago by a broad coalition of public intellectuals which included member of the European Parliament Leonidas Donskis, rector of Vilnius University Arturas Zukauskas and others (were they also all “delusional?”). Serving the Nazis as head of Siauliai district during World War II, Noreika signed orders forcing Jews into a ghetto and plundering their property (clearly they weren’t expected to come back).

Noreika’s granddaughter Silvia Foti, after discovering the truth, has courageously spoken out against the honoring of her grandfather. In what can only be described as an unstatesmanlike tirade, Landsbergis went so far as to publicly accuse her of “murdering him all over again” (Noreika was executed by the Soviets in 1947).

Landsbergis publicly condemned Vilnius City Council for removing the name of Kazys Skirpa, pro-Nazi leader of the Lithuanian Activist Front, the armed anti-Soviet resistance group behind the June 1941 Uprising, and nominal head of Lithuania’s provisional government under the Nazis, from a street in the middle of the capital. After the Vilnius synagogue was temporarily closed due to escalating anti-Semitism and threats of violence in the wake of these decisions, instead of calling for calm, Landsbergis continued to escalate his rhetoric, accusing head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky of being “useful to the Kremlin.”

Full text here.

Holocaust Haunts Lithuania as Names Are Erased from Capital’s Map

Holocaust Haunts Lithuania as Names Are Erased from Capital’s Map

Vilnius’s main synagogue shut its doors after the mayor denied city honors to two Holocaust enablers, prompting threats. It has since reopened, but the controversy over how to deal with the past has hardly died down.

This was never going to be an easy decision. The mayor of Vilnius, Remigijus Simasius, knew a storm was coming when he signed a decree on July 24 changing the name of Kazys Skirpa Street and days later another, to remove a memorial plaque dedicated to Jonas Noreika from the library of the country’s Academy of Sciences.

A small group of radical nationalists held a rally in central Vilnius to protest the mayor’s decrees, railing against “traitors who spit at the memory of the nation’s great sons.” Vilnius’s synagogue was temporarily closed. The president’s office tabled a meeting to address, among other issues, renaming streets and memorial plaques, the BNS news agency reported.

The most sensitive issue of Lithuania’s past–the Holocaust–had ignited passions once again.

Full story in English here.

Lithuanian Olympic Committee Congratulates Lithuanian Makabi on Wins at European Maccabi Games

Lithuanian Olympic Committee Congratulates Lithuanian Makabi on Wins at European Maccabi Games

Lithuania’s National Olympic Committee have sent their congratulations to the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club on the latter’s outstanding showing at the 15th European Maccabi Games held in Budapest in early August. Makabi Club president and head of delegation Semionas Finkelšteinas said their win was unprecedented both in the last hundred years of Lithuanian Jewish sporting history and in Lithuanian athletics overall.

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club teams contain many young people, which might explain their outstanding recent victories and should insure many more victories to come.

This year Lithuanian Makabi athletes took home around 62 medals, 25 of them gold. Although the athletes from Lithuania originally won 81 awards, but in the final count only medals won individually or in pairs or teams with athletes from a single country were registered, leaving Lithuanian Makabi an appreciable haul. During awards ceremonies the Lithuanian national anthem played a whopping 25 times and the Lithuanian flag was raised the same number of times.

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Lithuanian Writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė on Commemoration Controversies

Lithuanian Writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė on Commemoration Controversies

Photo: Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, photographed by Paulius Gasiūnas

by Audrius Ožalas, deputy chief editor, 15min.lt

“…If we’re discussing Jewish-Lithuanian relations, which is at the core of the memory wars going on now, great progress had been made towards reconciliation, and now there is again an attempt to destroy that. I believe this isn’t coincidental, the March of the Living is scheduled for September, and I perceive there is a very specific, strategic attempt to discredit, harm, to do something to get rid of this beautiful initiative, [to stop] our admission of guilt, our healing as a society, our reconciliation with our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Vytenis Andriukaitis Comments on Noreika Plaque Take-Down, Hitler-Stalin Equivalency

Vytenis Andriukaitis Comments on Noreika Plaque Take-Down, Hitler-Stalin Equivalency

Photo: © 2019 DELFI/Lukas Bartkus

In an interview conducted by the Lithuanian Telegraph Agency ELTA and published on the Delfi news site, outgoing Lithuanian European Commission commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis commented on the public controversy over the removal of a sign commemorating Jonas Noreika in Vilnius.

Question: Agitation has arisen in society because of the removal of the commemorative plaque for Jonas Noreika and the renaming of Kazys Škirpa Alley. In other words, conflict has arisen because of collective historical memory and this has provoked clear conflict between the Jewish community and [ethnic] Lithuanians. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky announced the closure of the synagogue and the community building due to threats received. The prime minister and the president immediately condemned expressions of hate, but the information had already been sent out to the international community that Jews are not safe in Lithuania. You are a highly educated person as well as an historian. As an historian, how do you view interference by politicians into historical memory? Do they have the right to do this?

Answer: The biggest complaint I have to make to the conservative ideologues is very clear: they politicize and rewrite history. Putin rewrites history, but this is being done in Lithuania by Landsbergis as well. Those who attempt to place an equal sign between the crimes of Stalinism and Nazi crimes–deportations, murders, exile–are also rewriting history. The Holocaust, however, is a unique Nazi crime, because the Nazi racial ideology is unique, one of a kind in the world. Communism was a universal system of beliefs … No distinction is made in Lithuania between Stalinist and Nazi crimes … The Holocaust of Naziism was a unique crime based on the Nazi ideology, based on an ultra-racist point of view, breeding people to create a superhuman breed and placing people in genetic categories: people, genetically deformed people and subhumans. Jews and Roma were subhumans, they were scheduled for extermination … This is horrific. Show me at least one Stalinist crime committed of this nature. The Stalinist concentration camps were crimes against humanity.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Inmates Meet Baron Wolfgang von Stetten

Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Inmates Meet Baron Wolfgang von Stetten

Members of Lithuania’s Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Inmates met with Lithuania’s honorary consul for the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Baron Wolfgang von Stetten was the chairman of the German Bundestag’s parliamentary group for contact with the Baltic states from 1990 to 2002. In July of 2019 he visited Vilnius and invited members of the Union to dinner at a restaurant. He invited members to visit him in Germany. He actively supports Holocaust survivors and those who were left orphaned during the war.

Wolfgang von Stetten lives in an 800-year-old castle, his family’s traditional home for some 30 generations now. Lithuanian presidents and influential politicians have visited his home numerous times. As Lithuanian honorary consul he contributed to the restoration of Lithuanian independence and the country’s accession to NATO and the EU.

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Do We Accept the Pain of Our Fellow Citizens?

Do We Accept the Pain of Our Fellow Citizens?

by Donatas Puslys, Bernardinai.lt

Following news of the closure of the Vilnius synagogue and the headquarters of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, I read on the social media that, allegedly, the Jewish community itself is inciting anti-Semitism in Lithuania today by dishonoring Lithuania’s heroes. The claim the Jews themselves are to blame for anti-Semitism is worthy of the title anti-Semitic.

I also read Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius is encouraging anti-Semitism. It seems to me, however, that only an anti-Semite is capable of spreading anti-Semitism. Since the mayor, whatever his shortcomings might be, is clearly not such, that seems to imply anti-Semites have existed in society even before this story began and have now found a convenient occasion to come out of the woodwork with their message of hate about traitors. The hero of Amos Oz’s book “Judas,” Shmuel, summarizes this message of hate succinctly, writing about how Judas was transformed from the New Testament figure into a symbol of betrayal and Jewishness, the former being connected with the latter. Today’s anti-Semites employ this imagery in their attempt to impose the opinion that discussions on the assessment of the activities of Noreia and Škirpa are themselves abnormal, while they are also difficult, painful and often get bogged down, but are nothing more than a betrayal by the Jews.

Anti-Semitism, it’s worth pointing out, is not just another position adopted in a dialogue, it is not an inevitability to which we must become accustomed for the sake of free speech. It is a cancer which should be removed before it metastasizes and infects the whole body, because, as [Baron Rabbi] Jonathan Sacks says, hatred which begins with Jews never ends with them alone.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel Appeals to Lithuanian President

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel Appeals to Lithuanian President

Bella Ben Ari Grozdensky posted the following letter on her facebook page:

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel

To: the honorable president of the Republic of Lithuania
Dr. Gitanas Nauseda

Re: Stop wave of anti-Semitism immediately

Your excellency president Nauseda,

As a result of the Vilnius municipality’s admirable activities regarding the memories of Skirpa and Noreika, a new violent wave of anti-Semitism has shown its face once again in Lithuania. It is vital that this wave of anti-Semitism be stopped immediately and eradicated so as not to taint the standing of the Lithuanian governments of the past thirty years.

It is inconceivable the only remaining synagogue in Vilnius is forced to shut its doors because of threats to the very existence of Jews only because they are Jews. This is the 21st century! Recall that prior to June 1941 there were more than 100 synagogues in Vilnius. Today there remains only one synagogue in Vilnius. The closure of this one and only synagogue on the most pious date, the 9th of Av, is not only shameful but criminal.

I do not wish to take part in the Lithuanian debate about Skirpa and Noreika. They were two people who enabled the violent expression of anti-Semitism as active participants of the Nazi program to annihilate the Jewish people. It is a know fact that the success of the Nazi collaborators in Lithuania was more successful that in the rest of Europe in their murder of 95% of the Jewish population in all of Lithuania.

I have travelled in Lithuania extensively, but I could not find Lithuanian memorial plaques to the righteous Lithuanians who actively saved Jews. In Kaunas there is a memorial plaque to the Japanese ambassador who did save many Jews.

I appeal to you, directly, because I am of the opinion that this is a national emergency. Anti-Semitism must be curtailed at once so as not fester and grow as it did 78 years ago. I beg you as our new distinguished president of the Republic of Lithuania to act responsibly and swiftly.

Respectfully,

Arie Ben-Ari Grozdenski, chairman
Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel

Happy Birthday to Miša Jakobas

Happy Birthday to Miša Jakobas

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to send our congratulations to Miša Jakobas, principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, on his milestone birthday. You are an excellent and accomplished teacher, and your school is among the top-rated in Lithuania. Not only do your students learn excellent Lithuanian and Hebrew, they also learn responsibility, ethics and good behavior. You have succeeded in preparing young people for responsible citizenship.

We wish you health, strength, love and the respect of your students. May hope and joy always follow you! Mazl tov!

Choral Synagogue in Vilnius Reopens

Choral Synagogue in Vilnius Reopens

Disagreements over the historical legacy of Kazys Škirpa and Jonas Noreika reached a sort of culmination yesterday. It was great to see how many journalists and historians treated the topic objectively. We thank them for their civic-mindedness. You have defended Lithuania’s history and conscience.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has a difficult mission. She was forced to make a decision based on the painful experience of her family and all LJC members. It was a courageous and difficult decision.

Sadly, this situation did not lead to greater unity among the Jewish communities. At least not verbally.

The take by the president and prime minister on events and their assurances of security meant much to us.

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On the Closure of the LJC and Choral Synagogue for an Indeterminate Period

On the Closure of the LJC and Choral Synagogue for an Indeterminate Period

ANNOUNCEMENT

ON THE CLOSURE OF THE LJC BUILDING AND SYNAGOGUE FOR AN INDETERMINATE PERIOD

The continual, escalating publicly-expressed desire by one political party for recognizing perpetrators of the mass murder of the Jews of Lithuania as national heroes and the demand these people be honored with commemorative plaques and by other means, as well as the public call to attend protests to defend this shameful position on August 7 not only divide Lithuanian society, but actively set factions against one another.

Anti-Semitic comments and inscriptions which are posted to social media pages of political parties and their leaders are being tolerated and go unpunished (even calling the Christian Mary “Jew-girl”), which makes us wonder even more whether we are safe or not.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has received threatening telephone calls and letters in recent days. In this atmosphere of rising tension and incitement to more tension, neither the LJC nor the synagogue in Vilnius have the means to insure the safety of visitors, including Holocaust survivors and their families.

We underline the fact that up to the present time we have not seen any reaction by any institution to the escalating discord. We would like to hear the opinion of the leaders of Lithuania and to hear a firm position on whether public propaganda in favor of honoring Holocaust perpetrators will continue to be tolerated in Lithuania.

In order to insure the safety of members of the community and worshipers and without any indication that the proponents of this escalating provocation will be called to disciple or account publicly, in cases where the law provides for this, the LJC has been forced to make the painful but unavoidable decision to close the LJC building and the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius for an indeterminate period.

We are also requesting additional security be provided at the Jewish cemetery on Sudervė road in Vilnius to prevent vandalism.

The LJC will adopt future decisions based on the general atmosphere and the positions adopted and expressed by Lithuanian political leaders regarding these issues.

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
Vilnius, August 6, 2019

Ethnic Slur Appears on Facebook Page of Vytautas Landsbergis

In a recent facebook post an unattributed poem appeared on Vytautas Landesbergis’s page  on August 2 using the pejorative “žydelka,” roughly equivalent to “Jew-boy” but in this case “Jew-girl,” considered offensive in modern Lithuanian.

Vytautas Landsbergis Facebook
08:49, August 2

LABIAUSIAI

Labiausiai nenorėčiau
kad mano tautiečiai nusiteiktų
prieš žydus
po ir dėl Šimašiaus užtemimo.

Slapčia norėčiau
kad atsirastų vienas kitas žydas
protingas ir drąsus
nepritariąs Šimašiui.

Ir visiems broliams lietuviams
sakau ir sakau iš tikrųjų
jau ketvirtį amžiaus:
niekada nepamirškite
kad Dievo Motina kuriai
meldžiamės kurios
užtarimo prašome
buvo šventa žydelka.

A rough translation:

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Lithuanian Jewish Community Statement Regarding Recent Public Debates on Known Holocaust Perpetrators

Lithuanian Jewish Community Statement Regarding Recent Public Debates on Known Holocaust Perpetrators

On Political Responsibility in Judging Collaboration with Occupational Regimes

The Lithuanian Jewish Community expresses concern certain Lithuanian political forces and political figures, not possessing any legal or historical foundation to do so, are publicly and actively defending people, people whose tragic fates do not exonerate them from actions which are documented and have been assessed by authoritative and competent commissions constituted of historians including the International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Soviet and Nazis Occupational Regimes in Lithuania, formed by presidential decree in 1998.

We call upon the political elite of the country to abstain from defending those whose reputations have been tarnished by their collaboration with the Nazis as well as the Soviets. We would remind them that this sort of public defense legally transgresses the internationally accepted definition of the crime of genocide adopted by the United Nations as well as the international definition of anti-Semitism which Lithuania has adopted. We would like to point out that these kinds of irresponsible statements in fact border upon Holocaust denial and should cease immediately. We hope for more understanding and support from the highest leaders of state in solving these and similar problems at the national level.

LJC Chairwoman Debates Ultra-Nationalist MP on Lithuanian TV

LJC Chairwoman Debates Ultra-Nationalist MP on Lithuanian TV

Lietuvos rytas, a television station, newspaper and website, broadcasted Tuesday an interview/discussion with Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Conservative Party/Christian Democratic Union MP Laurynas Kasčiūnas on Saturday’s removal of a plaque commemorating Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika from central Vilnius Saturday.

Kasčiūnas said he and people of like mind have asked the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the removal of the plaque by Vilnius major Remigijus Šimašius for possibly violating the public interest and the principles of the rule of law. He quoted a finding by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania–a state-funded, state-administered historical research agency–claiming the Center found Noreika had not collaborated with the Nazis.

Kasčiūnas dominated the interview and spoke rapid-fire according to Conservative Party talking points, repeating claims made by other ultra-nationalists in recent days. When the hostess asked chairwoman Kukliansky to respond to Kasčiūnas’s initial barrage of falsifications, disinformation and half-truths, she asked whether anyone had finally determined who commissioned the Noreika plaque in the first place. Kasčiūnas claimed Šimašius had produced documentation showing the Vilnius city municipality commissioned and paid for the plaque in 1997 or 1998. This appears to be a key point in the entire story and could be of vital importance in legal challenges to Šimašius’s move in the future.

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