Holocaust – Page 18 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Israeli Journos Fail to Fight Latvian, Lithuanian Holocaust Distortion

Photo: Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a news conference with then-Latvian prime minister Maris Kucinskis in 2018. Photo credit: Ints Kalnins/Reuters.

Israel Has Failed to Fight Latvia, Lithuania’s Holocaust Distortion

A number of acclaimed films have shone a spotlight on the Holocaust in the Baltics. But Latvia and Lithuania have responded with Holocaust distortion.

by Efraim Zuroff, Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2023

During the past half year, three new documentary films devoted to the Holocaust in the Baltics, and especially in Lithuania, have been screened in numerous venues all over the world, except in Lithuania and Latvia, which are the subjects of these films.

One, titled When Did the Holocaust Begin, was produced by the BBC and focuses on the use of new forensic archeological technology to discover unknown mass graves of Holocaust victims in western Lithuania, where indeed the systematic mass murder of European Jewry began following the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, on June 22, 1941.

2023-05-23

Sunday Spent Cleaning Up Jewish Cemetery

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenbergu Silverstein and her family and US ambassador to Lithuania Robert Gilchrist spent last Sunday cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery in Paberžė, which is located about 20 kilometers north of Vilnius. They collected garbage, raked up leaves, cleaned off lichen and washed headstones. Kukliansky thanked the volunteers as well as Paberžė alderwoman Agata Puncevičienė who has worked hard to commemorate those buried there. There are over 260 historical Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, but most of them are in ruins, neglected and full of garbage. The Jews of Paberžė along with Jewish communities across Lithuania were murdered by Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators during the Holocaust. Chairwoman Kukliansky said we can all do something to honor their memories.

2023-05-232023-05-23

Forgotten Exodus Tells Stories of Jews Expelled from Poland in 1960s

Records of the Polish Communist government’s post-Holocaust anti-Semitic purges to be preserved via video interviews, written narratives and archival materials

by Michelle Rosenberg, Jewish News

A new initiative dedicated to capturing and disseminating the untold stories of Jews who fled Poland in the late 1960s following a wave of anti-Semitic purges was officially launched today.

The Forgotten Exodus project is committed to gathering testimonies from victims, many of them Holocaust survivors, to document their experiences and ensure their history is not erased.

Its mission is to shed light on the then Polish Communist government’s anti-Semitic campaign in 1968, a significant yet largely unknown chapter in modern European history.

Commemorating the 55th anniversary in 2023, it marks the deeply dark time when up to 20,000 of the remaining post-Shoah Jewish population of around 30,000 were stripped of their citizenship, forced out of their jobs and driven out of Poland.

2023-05-222023-05-22

Happy Birthday to Fania Brancovskaja

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky visited Jewish partisan Fania Brancovskaja at home to personally give the Community’s greetings on two special occasions: Fania’s birthday on May 22 and Victory Day, marking the end of the Holocaust in Europe. Fania Brancovskaja was a Jewish partisan who fought the Nazis in Lithuania. Since the end of the Holocaust Fania has devoted her life to keeping the memory of the victims alive and teaching the new generations about what happened. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2023-05-22

Lithuanian MP Thrown Out of Party for Anti-Semitic Statements

Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis says his party’s ratings will suffer following the decision to cast him out for making anti-Semitic statements, the Lithuanian news agency ELTA reports.

He belonged to the Freedom and Justice party and was elected to his fourth term in the Lithuanian parliament in 2020.

Žemaitaitis says his removal will harm that party’s popularity and claimed he accounts for around 6% of the support the party enjoys in the Žemaitijan region in city council and mayoral elections.

2023-05-222023-05-22

This Is a NATO Ally?

by Grant Gochin

The civilized world has confirmed that Jonas Noreika was a mass genocidal Holocaust perpetrator. The world’s most authoritative body on the Holocaust, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) issued this statement on 11 April 2019: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/statements/statement-center-study-genocide-and-resistance-lithuania

Again on 7 July, 2020, IHRA issued this statement about Lithuania’s Holocaust fraud: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/statements/ihra-statement-rehabilitation

On 27 March, 2019, Lithuania’s own Presidential Commission affirms Noreika’s crimes here: https://www.komisija.lt/en/a-response-to-the-statement-of-the-genocide-and-resistance-research-centre-of-lithuania-of-27-march-2019-on-the-accusations-against-jonas-noreika-general-vetra/

Full text here.

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Condolences

Long-time Community member Izrailis Šifrinas passed away May 18. He was born in 1938. Our deepest condolences to his widow, children and many friends.

2023-05-192023-05-19

LJC Chairwoman Greets Veterans

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman made home visits to greet WWII veterans on the occasion of Victory Day this year. Usually the LJC holds an event on May 8 and/or May 9, VE Day and Victory Day, respectively, at the LJC in Vilnius under the aegis of the Seniors Club, but our aging soldiers are finding it more and more difficult to make that trip, so chairwoman Kukliansky went to them instead. She visited 99-year-old Community member Eliziejus Rimanas and Aleksandras Asovskis who will celebrate his 102nd birthday in the next few days.

2023-05-18

Condolences

Musia Gleizer passed away May 15. She was born in 1938 and was a long-time member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community. Our deep condolences to her children Natalja and Edikas, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and many other friends and family members.

2023-05-18

Pages from Music History: Anna Varshavski

Sarah Matz took the married name Anna Varshavski aka Anna Lvovna Warsaw. She was a singer and a philanthropist. She was born in Vilnius in December of 1896 when it was part of the Russian Empire. Her parents Jehuda and Fradel Matz owned a Jewish publishing house. She began studies at the Berlin Conservatory in 1920. In 1928 she set up an amateur choir in Kaunas which grew in reputation and size and eventually included around 50 members, coming to be known as the Jewel of Joel Engel Choir. They performed throughout Lithuania and on state radio. The choir disbanded in 1936. Varshavski also contributed to setting up the New Jewish Theater in Vilnius. She and her family were put in the Kaunas ghetto in 1941, and she was murdered at the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia in 1944.

http://yiddishmusic.jewniverse.info/varshavskianna/index.html

Tsum Hemerl (Avrom Reisen – Avraham Moshe Bernstein)

Anna Varshavski & “Engel-Chor”

Columbia DMX 301 (WJLX 8)

2023-05-172023-05-17

What Do You Know about Litvak Writers?

Arakdijus Vinokuras’s monthly quiz asks that question at the next quiz scheduled for 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, May 21 at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius. This quiz will be dedicated to the three Litvak writers Icchokas Meras and the recently deceased Grigoriy Kanovitch and Markas Zingeris, may they rest in peace. It will be streamed on facebook as well.

2023-05-172023-05-17

Lithuania’s Self-Generated Problem

Photo: Poster honoring Kazys Skirpa. Translation: “A Nation which respects itself should know its heroes: Diplomat Colonel Kazys Skirpa First volunteer who raised the flag of Lithuania on Gediminas Tower on January 1, 1919, the head of the Lithuanian Activist Front, organizer of the June 1941 uprising. The Nation knows its heroes!”

Hate against minorities is supposedly illegal in Lithuania. Lithuanian MP Žemaitaitis spewed obscene tropes against Jews which did not make sense in the 1200s, nor in 1941, and not now, either. In subsequent posts, Žemaitaitis called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Lithuania.

The Austrian, German, American and Israeli ambassadors issued statements condemning Žemaitaitis, as did the prime minister of Lithuania. The Lithuanian Jewish Community has requested Žemaitaitis be referred to the public prosecutor for hate crimes charges.

Superficially, the case is straightforward. The crimes are obvious, the law is clear, there is no question of his guilt. Hate is simply hate. But, the Government of Lithuania has a problem.

2023-05-152023-05-18

Happy Birthday

We wish a very happy birthday to Sergejus Kanovičius. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2023-05-10

Two Hundred Historians Back Polish Holocaust Expert under Attack

In a letter of support, historians and scholars worldwide said that the Polish attack on Holocaust scholar professor Barbara Engelking harmed attempts “to understand the processes that allowed the Holocaust to take place.”

Two hundred historians, including senior Holocaust scholars from Israel and around the globe, signed a letter in support of professor Barbara Engelking, a Polish historian who has been under attack in her homeland after she said the Poles did not do enough to help Jews during the Shoah.

“We, the undersigned scholars of the Holocaust Era, the Second World War, and Modern and Jewish History, express our firm support for Professor Barbara Engelking and for academic freedom, in the face of an unbridled and unfounded attack by politicians, media, and other public figures. … We can attest to the fact that she is a scholar of impeccable personal and professional integrity. Her scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards, for which she has earned worldwide esteem,” the historians wrote.

2023-05-10

Lithuanian MP Denounces Israel for Razing Palestinian School EU Financed

Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party formed of two rival liberal parties to contest municipal elections in Vilnius in 2014, denounced Israel’s destruction of a school in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The US, Israeli and German ambassadors called for him to apologize for the remarks, first made on facebook on Monday, May 8, repeated in parliament Tuesday, the same day Israel started bombing the Gaza Strip in what it calls Operation Shield and Arrow. Despite the demands of the ambassadors and his fellow MPs, Žemaitaitis said he won’t apologize.

On Tuesday he told parliament assembled: “I want to emphasize this school was fully financed by the European Union, by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and the other countries. … And if we believe that it’s alright to allow in the 21st century some country to blow up or destroy these kinds of sites of another country, then ask yourselves, what sort of moral and political values do you live by today? Mine are much higher than you think.”

2023-05-102023-05-11

Litvak Community Leaders Mark Victory Day in Israel

On May 8, VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, the heads of several constituent communities in the Lithuanian Jewish Community, including LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and others, marked the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the capitulation of Nazi Germany to allies during a trip to Israel.

Shmuel Yatom, the chairman of the Vilnius Religious Jewish Community, performed a prayer prayed by victims on the way to Treblinka in Sderot, Israel.

The Litvak leaders are in Israel for workshops sponsored by the European Commission for more effective implementation of the EC’s strategy for fighting anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish life in the European Union.

They visited Sderot on the border with the Gaza Strip which saw Israeli counter-attacks last night and into the morning of May 9. The Israeli town is known as Israel’s bomb shelter capital because of frequent rocket attacks from Gaza. They also planned to meet the mayor of Ashkelon, and to take part in a ceremony honoring Mordechai Aneliwicz, an organizer of the Warsaw Uprising. The LJC is planning a joint conference with the Poland’s Jewish Historical Institute this fall to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna ghetto.

2023-05-092023-05-09

Condolences

Vladimir Shevtsov passed away May 5. He was born in 1936. He is mourned by Moshe Shapiro, director of the Švenčionys Jewish Community to which he belonged, and the entire Lithuanian Jewish Community. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends. Rest in peace, Vladimir.

2023-05-08

Markas Zingeris in Memoriam

The Jewish discussion club #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai invites the public to attend a special panel to remember Markas Zingeris, who died unexpectedly recently.

Over fifty years of work Markas has left us a rich inheritance: thoughts, ideas, texts, books, plays, poetry and the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum, where he served as director since its inception for several decades. His keen insights and very rational thinking had a deep influence on the development of Lithuanian society and politics following independence as well as before. He always demonstrated a spirit of openness, tolerance, rationality and ethical behavior.

Panelists to include Emanuelis Zingeris, Markas’s brother and MP; Emilis, Markas’s son; Violeta Davoliūtė, professor of philosophy and the history of ideas at Vilnius University, cultural historian, Holocaust researcher and colleague of Markas and Gytis Padegimas, a famous Lithuanian theater director who was a close confident (appearing via internet at the discussion club). Actor, popular writer and journalist Arkadijus Vinokuras will moderate the conversation which will be live-streamed on facebook with the help of his son Saulius.

The event is to take place at the Bagel Shop Café at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, May 10. The live-stream will be made available on facebook by following this short URL: https://rb.gy/uok94

2023-05-052023-05-05

Joint Statement on the Dialogue on Holocaust Issues

May 3, 2023

The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany.

Begin Text

The Governments of the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany announce significant progress in their Dialogue on Holocaust Issues. Secretary of State Blinken and then-Federal Foreign Minister Maas launched the Dialogue in 2021 to counter the rise in Holocaust denial and distortion — a dangerous development that undermines freedom, democracy, and security — and to contribute to a world in which knowledge about the Holocaust is abundant, based on facts, and serves as a foundation for tackling today´s challenges at an early stage. The U.S. Department of State, the German Federal Foreign Office, the German Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum participate in the Dialogue. They have completed initial projects in three priority areas:

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