News – Page 4 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Gintautas Paluckas Tells German Social Democrats: There Will Be No Anti-Semitism in New Coalition

by Justina Vaišvilaitė-Braziulienė, November 11, 2024, delfi.lt

Leading candidate for prime minister Social Democrat Gintautas Paluckas said he assured German partners Lithuania’s next Government will be free of anti-Semitism. The deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party (LSDP) said he answered all questions concerning the potential coalition partner Nemunas Dawn raised by German Social Democrats over the weekend.

“This morning we also spoke with the chair of the German Social Democrats and we discussed this situation. No doubt they are watching this, given we are strategic partners and have serious bilateral commitments. I explained the situation as it actually is, so they don’t get the impression from inaccurate quotes on social media and in the media,” Paluckas told reporters at the Lithuanian parliament Monday.

“There is not and there will not be any anti-Semitism in the Social Democrat-run Government and coalition,” he said when asked to elaborate on the factual situation he presented to the Germans.

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Natalja Cheifec’s Discussion Club to Meet Thursday

Natalja Cheifec’s discussion club #ŠALOM invites you to the next discussion at 5:30 P.M. on November 14 via the Zoom platform.

To register and receive Zoom login credentials, click here.

Remember to indicate your questions of interest on the registration form.

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Happy Birthday, Emanuelchik

A belated happy birthday to Emanuelis Zingeris who marked another year back on October 27. Lithuania’s only Jewish member of parliament, Emanuelis is also a qualified philologist, a signatory to the Restoration of Independence Act back in 1990 and a founder of the Jewish cultural club which became the Lithuanian Jewish Community, as well as serving as chairman in the early years of the latter. We wish you all the very best. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2024-11-12

A Very Happy Birthday to Arkadijus Gotesmanas

Artist, musician and composer Arkadijus Gotesmanas celebrated his birthday Monday. The entire LJC and chairwoman Faina Kukliansky wish him endless creativity and many more years of productivity in life as well as on the stage. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2024-11-12

Happy Birthday, Arkadijus Vinokuras

Writer and thinker Arkadijus Vinokuras celebrated a birthday last week and the entire Community wishes him all the best. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2024-11-12

Man Arrested in Šiauliai for Desecrating Israeli Flag

Šiauliai city and district police arrested a city resident November 6 alleged to have taken the remains of an Israeli flag from the Šiauliai Jewish Community building after removing and destroying it, Šiauliai district police reported.

Security cameras captured the vandal removing the flag from its mount outside the Jewish community building, casting it aside and then leaving. Later the same figure appeared to return, destroy the flag and carry off the remains. Desecration of flags of other nations, the EU and certain international organizations is a crime under article 128 of the Lithuanian criminal code.

Officers from the city and district police forces were patrolling the city and observed the suspect from the video camera around noon that day. They arrested him. The 52-year-old man had a criminal record including theft, robbery and counterfeiting of official documents. The charge could carry a maximum two-year prison sentence.

2024-11-12

Pogrom in Amsterdam

by Geoff Vasil

Last Thursday night into Friday morning gangs of Hamas supporters hunted down and assaulted Israeli fans of the Tel Aviv Maccabi FC soccer team in Amsterdam. There were multiple people wounded, some seriously. The masked gangs waving Palestinian flags demanded statements of “Free Palestine” from two of their victims as they were being beaten, including one non-Israeli caught up in street violence.

The organized pogrom against Jews in the Dutch capital came on the eve of Kristallnacht, the Nazi SA’s nation-wide pogrom in Germany in 1938.

While the public has come to expect violence between fans of rival soccer clubs in Europe, these attacks were something else. Earlier in the evening Israeli fans had chanted anti-Arab slogans as they left the sporting venue and boarded trains for their hotels, but Israelis didn’t initiate any violence. Sources close to Israeli intelligence report taxi drivers in Amsterdam supplied information to the organized violent gangs on where Israeli fans had travelled and the locations where they were staying.

Israel sent several airplanes to rescue Israeli citizens from the violence in Amsterdam. El Al reported they evacuated 2,000 Israeli citizens. Dutch King Willem-Alexander said “our history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse,” adding that the country could not ignore “anti-Semitic behavior,” the BBC reported. Amsterdam police didn’t intervene to stop the hunting down of Jews and brutal assaults by knife-wielding Hamas terrorists.

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AJC’s Andrew Baker Sends Open Letter to Presumptive Lithuanian PM

Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of the International Jewish Affairs Department of the AJC and representative of the OSCE for fighting anti-Semitism, has sent a letter to Lithuanian Social Democrat MP Gintautas Paluckas, favored to serve as Lithuania’s next prime minster, warning of irreparable harm which would ensue from forming a governing coalition with Remigius Žemaitaitis and his party Nemuno Aušta. The letter was also sent to Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda.

Letter:

Dear Mr. Gintautas Paluckas,

The American Jewish Committee and I personally have been strong supporters of a democratic and independent Lithuania since the formation of the Sajudas independence party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We were among the first and strongest advocates in Washington for a NATO enlargement that would welcome Lithuania into the defense alliance at the very time when many others cautioned against crossing Russia’s “red lines.” For all these years since we have been stalwart promoters of a strong and close bilateral relationship between the United States and Lithuania.

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Lithuanian Jewish Community on the Participation of Nemuno Aušra Party under Remigijus Žemaitaitis in Next Government

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, uniting 32 domestic and international organizations, urges president of the Republic of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, to defend the principles embedded in the Lithuanian constitution and to prevent the anti-Semitic forces represented by the political party Nemuno Aušra from becoming part of the new ruling coalition and government.

Nemuno Aušra was founded and is led by Remigijus Žemaitaitis, who was deemed by the Constitutional Court to have breached his parliamentary oath and grossly violated the constitution through anti-Semitic statements and incitement of ethnic hatred. Due to a loophole in the law, he evaded accountability and continues to cynically deny the decision of the highest judicial authority, defaming the judges who made this ruling, and thereby undermining Lithuania’s status as a state under the rule of law on the international stage.

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Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 4:10 P.M. on Friday, November 8 and concludes at 5:24 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

2024-11-08

Attacks Continue on Šiauliai Jewish Community

The Šiauliai Jewish Community headquarters has been vandalized for the third time recently on November 6. This time an unknown subject removed an Israeli flag from its holder outside the building and desecrated the flag. Last week a vandal also attacked the Israeli flag there. Police arrested and fined a man in a recent similar incident before that.

Security cameras captured the crimes on October 30 and November 6, respectively:

2024-11-08

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 4:24 on Friday, November 1, and concludes at 5:39 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

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Israel Bans Activities by UN Agency Linked to Terrorism

The Israeli parliament the Knesset voted Monday to ban all activities by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency largely responsible for delivering food and medicine in Gaza. Israeli lawmakers made the move following the presentation of evidence UNRWA staff were among the Hamas terrorists who raped, burned and killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and took another 250 hostage. Israel had shown videos the terrorists made of themselves during that massacre and invasion show UNRWA staff driving motorcycles and holding guns and hand grenades.

The United Nations initially denied the accusations, then performed an investigation of itself, which basically concluded some UNRWA staff “might have been involved.” Later the UN argued UNRWA staff including Hamas terrorists are basically international diplomats and therefore enjoy diplomatic immunity from prosecution.

The Knesset passed two laws dealing with UNRWA. The first bans all activities on Israeli soil, presumably meaning inside Israel including the Golan Heights but not the West Bank or Gaza. The second law specifically states UNRWA staff are not immune from prosecution for their crimes, as well as banning official contact between Israeli agencies and public servants with UNRWA.

2024-10-29

Is Yiddish Experiencing a Renaissance?

by Daiva Gabrilavičiūtė, LRT.lt, October 26, 2024

“The Yiddish language has become a symbol of Jewish cultural resistance and survival. In spite of waves of historical oppression, the Holocaust and assimilation, Yiddish reflects the resolution, resilience and continuity of the Jewish people,” Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches told Lithuanian state radio and teleivision.

Yiddish appeared about a millennium ago in what is now Germany. Large Jewish communities settled in Eastern Europe. Over time Yiddish became more than the everyday language of communication and was used in Jewish intellectual and cultural life. Books and newspapers were published, songs were written and plays performed in Yiddish.

Before World War II more than 10 million people spoke Yiddish. Most were murdered during the Holocaust. The handful who survived faced Soviet oppression. Others found safe haven on the other side of the Atlantic.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

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Last Nazi Hunter’s New Battle: Efraim Zuroff on Life after Simon Wiesenthal Center

by Alex Winston, Jpost, October 25, 2024

Veteran Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff talks about his long career and new ongoing battle: fighting Holocaust distortion.

In early September an innocuous facebook message was posted, stating: “After 38 years as director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and 13 years during which I was responsible for Eastern European Affairs as well, I will be leaving the center at the end of this month (September 2024). Looking for new opportunities to continue to combat Holocaust distortion, and antisemitism.”

If the post was intended to serve as a chance to alert potential employers to new employment opportunities, Efraim Zuroff may have been underselling himself slightly.

Zuroff, often referred to as “the last Nazi hunter,” has spent over four decades tracking down war criminals and holding them accountable for their roles in the Holocaust. But as Zuroff reaches the twilight of his career, his focus has shifted toward a more insidious problem–Holocaust distortion.

In his own words, “Holocaust distortion is a new form of antisemitism.” Zuroff’s mission to expose this growing issue, particularly in Eastern Europe, reflects the larger fight against historical manipulation and the dangers it poses for future generations.

Full article here.

2024-10-29

Second Round of Voting: Blinkevičiūtė Next Lithuanian PM

by Geoff Vasil

Following the ballot Sunday in the second round of voting for the Lithuanian parliament and thus a new Government it now looks almost certain former social democrat labor minister Vilija Blinkevičiūtė will replace conservative PM Ingrida Šimonytė. The pro-gay Freedom Party failed to win a single seat, the marginal and somewhat extremist National Unification party is also unrepresented and the current ruling coalition with the Conservative Party as the prime mover will now give way to a parliamentary coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Union of Peasants and Greens and the party which splintered off from the latter, the Democratic Union “For Lithuania” under former PM Saulius Skvernelis.

The Conservative Party took second place in terms of number of seats but was in a tight race with the Nemuno Aušra party MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis formed in response to being castigated for numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel posts and statements he made over a year ago. The Conservative Party will like now form the official opposition with party leader Gabrielius Landsbergis stepping down from the party and resigning his seat in parliament the same day. The Liberal Union currently in coalition government is not announcing whether they seek to join the social Democrats in a new coalition but the sounds coming from liberal speaker of parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen indicate they will not join such a coalition.

Blinkevičiūtė, Skvernelis and Peasants/Greens leader Ramūnas Karbiauskis received an audience at the President’s Office Monday. As the head of state the president must approve any new ruling coalition and new cabinet of ministers.

Political commentators and members of the main winning parties in this election have said Remigijus Žemaitaitis and his Nemuno Aušra party will likely be a thorn in the side of parliament, a source of endless scandal, that it’s unlikely to consolidate into a serious political force and that they would be an unreliable partner for coalition, never mind the openly anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements emanating from Žemaitaitis. That party also has a problem with candidates and now MPs who have lied about their criminal records on election forms. Žemaitaitis said he would not join the Conservatives in official parliamentary opposition and would likely support the Social Democratic Party on a vote-by-vote basis in the legislature.

The information presented here does not reflect any position but that of the author and all mistakes are his.

Update: Vilija Blinkevičiūtė declined the post of prime minister citing age. Social democrat Gintautas Paluckas is now favored to become the next PM.

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Remigijus Žemaitaitis Is a Cynical Demagogue and Liar

by Gercas Žakas, chairman, Kaunas Jewish Community, writing in the newspaper Kauno diena

After Remigijus Žemaitaitis’s party Nemuno aušra [Dawn of the Nieman River] received significant support from voters at the polls in the first round of voting, the Kaunas Jewish Community has been watching to see what the final outcome of elections to parliament will be. We have observed even before the second round of voting how the rhetoric of the political parties has changed regarding Žemaitaitis.

It would be hard to find a more cynical character. A demagogue and a liar. Divisive and slinging mud. His speeches contain many lies and accusations against his opponents and ethnic minorities of imaginary crimes. Now he’s trying to squirm out of the situation, again lyving that he hasn’t said anything bad about Lithuanian Jews. If some party nonetheless does enter into a coalition government with him, it would demonstrate that there are no principles nor values when it comes to the struggle for power. That nothing is sacred.

Read Žemaitaitis’s social media posts. In May of last year he posted on facebook: “For how much longer will our politicians go down on bended knee to the Jews who murdered our people, contributed to the hunting down and torture of Lithuanians and the extermination of our country;” “There was a Jewish Holocaust, but there was a bigger Holocaust of Lithuanians in Lithuania. The murder and torture of Lithuanians, the rape of women and the separation of children from their parents was a pleasant attraction and a joyous moment” and “The Lithuanian nation must never forget the Jews and Russians who contributed so greatly to the destruction of our people.”

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