Local resident reported Saturday evening the statue commemorating Jewish Lithuanian industrialist Chaim Frankel in the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai had been vandalized. Male genitalia were painted on his trousers with what appeared to be white paint. This follows the appearance of a swastika at the Lithuanian Jewish Community headquarters in Vilnius in August. The male genitalia remained on the Frankel statue as of midnight as Sunday turned to Monday, October 7.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky commented on the incident: “Maybe the Frankel statue was vandalized by drunken youth, or maybe not, but this again is an opportunity to talk about anti-Semitism, especially as we prepare to participate in International Holocaust Day events in January and to mark 2020 as the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History in events around Lithuania.”

Lithuanian television channel TV3 ran the incident as their top story on Sunday with an interview with chairwoman Kukliansky, who said Frankel put Šiauliai on the map and his factory later served as a life saver for Jewish ghetto inmates who were allowed to work there, “as in Schindler’s List.”

Speaking directly to www.lzb.lt, Faina Kukliansky said: “This was just one Jewish family whose contribution to Lithuanian industry was priceless and whose memory has been desecrated so brutally just as the Jews were brutally murdered during the second half of 1941.”

Not Only the Names of Angels Decorate the Wall of Martyrs in Central Vilnius

Another scandal is brewing: it’s becoming clear not just the names of angels decorate the wall of martyrs in central Vilnius

by Rimvydas Valatka, lrytas.lt, from facebook

It would appear the hunger to rehabilitate the looters and murderers of Jews by incorporating them in the ranks of those who have laid down their lives for their country, the partisans, has become a sort of auxiliary to the discipline of history for the Genocide Center.

Six murderers and looters of innocent people commemorated as heroes–this is not just a plaque commemorating General Storm [Jonas Noreika] who collaborated with the Nazis on this question. This is already a very brown matter. Perhaps some Pro Patria Lithuanian teacher will splash brown paint upon the wall?

The forces of the defenders of Nazi collaborators should move quickly to the former KGB headquarters because the historians are beating “our own people.”

by Sigitas Parulskis

When I think about Lithuanian anti-Semitism, there is a lack of reasoning. How can you hate someone who isn’t there? And there are almost no Jews left in Lithuania. It would be the same as being afraid of or hating the Wizard of Oz because he didn’t give you a brain.

Lithuanian anti-Semitism’s list of grievances, its casus belli, was fully formed in the period from 1939 to 1941. The loss of the Klaipeda region, the Soviet occupation, deportation, massacres, the Nazi invasion–all good reasons to look for a culprit. And here we are, still afflicted by this hapless anti-Semitism. Is it in our subconscious? In our genes? We are no longer living under conditions of occupation and war, so where does this anachronism come from?

Is it possible for us to overcome our warped relationship with Jews? Everything’s possible, if there’s a will and reason. And this is a political rather than a cultural relationship. The political man proclaims truth is on my side, while the cultural man asks what in the hell truth is anyway, and to me this question seems more interesting, more imaginative and more human.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Ninth Fort Museum held a Holocaust commemoration on the morning of September 23. Kaunas students and cultural workers also participated in the civic initiative called “Way of Memory.”

Georgian musician Davit Kldiashvili performed and attendees viewed a Ninth Fort exhibit on the Holocaust.

After the event a group of Kaunas Jewish Community members attended the Holocaust commemoration held in Balbieriškis which also commemorated the vitality of Jewish life in the Lithuanian shtetlakh and Volfas Kaganas, Lithuanian military volunteer and twice recipient of the Order of the Cross of Vytis.