Lithuanian Jewish Community

Writer Katarzyna Markusz Questioned by Polish Prosecutor for Insulting National Myth about Holocaust

Katarzyna Markusz was questioned on suspicion of violating a law against defaming the country after an anonymous complaint about an article from 2020. She faces up to 3 years in jail.

Polish police are probing a local journalist who wrote last year about Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

Katarzyna Markusz, who runs the Jewish.pl website and writes for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was questioned last Thursday on suspicion that she violated Article 133 of the Polish constitution, which subjects those who “publicly insults the Nation or the Republic of Poland” to up to three years in prison.

An anonymous complaint was filed against Markusz, which led to her detention and interrogation, according to Oko.press.

In October, 2020, Markusz wrote in an article: “Will we live to see the day when the Polish authorities also admit that hostility toward Jews was widespread among Poles, and that Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a historical fact?

2021-02-152021-02-26

Two Noreikas: Laser Sight against Flintlock Musket in Information Wars

by Mingailė Jurkutė, chief historian, Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania

The current director of the Genocide Center is trying to give the impression all that is happening are just internal department disputes, depot against depot, one faction of historians against another, or maybe historians vs. museum specialists, or maybe even brave, ambitious and mobile visionaries of the new administration against the academics at a small bureaucratic institution who long for stagnation and a light work-load. This is a terrific and naked lie.

Center historians are productive and their academic production and other specific Center production, for example, writing brief–barely two pages long–and exact findings of history, which often require examining just as much material as for an article in the normal academic format. And they want reform, they are proposing reforms themselves. This story is a very successful technique when you want misconstrue and hide what is going on, for example, as Soviet ideologues went to extremes to explain the partisan war was really a class war, or a civil war, and in any case… an internal social dispute.

But I want to return the real players (the sides) to center stage, because they are getting lost due to the noise, agitation and intentional mud-slinging (of which an example is the letter the administration drafted to defend the administration, not without pressure from direct bosses to staff to sign on in telephone calls made outside working hours, forcing employees to arrive in person at the workplace to sign in the midst of the pandemic).

2021-02-122021-02-12

Stark War of Principles Brewing in Lithuanian Parliament: Ruling Coalition MPs to Cross Swords

by Vytautas Bruveris, Lietuvos rytas

Even representatives of different camps within the ruling majority are set to cross swords. This war of positions will come to the fore in parliament because of the activities of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania currently besieged by scandal.

Tomas Raskevičius, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s Human Rights Committee and a member of the ruling Freedom Party, believes the Office of State Auditor needs to thoroughly investigate the Genocide Center and says there could be many different problems there.

The Human Rights Committee exercises parliamentary supervision of the Genocide Center, but the Lithuanian parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee chaired by conservative Laurynas Kasčiūnas has taken the reins over the Center into its own hands. Further, a special working group empaneled by parliamentary speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen is set to begin investigating the activities of the Genocide Center, a working group which will also feature a diversity of opinions.

2021-02-122021-02-24

Former Death Camp Guard Age 100 Faces Charges in Germany

Delfi.lt

Charges have been laid in Germany against a 100-year-old former concentration camp guard accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 people as the country rushes to bring the last living people who worked for the Nazis to justice, AFP reported Monday.

The male suspect is accused of “consciously and willingly” aiding in the murder of Jewish prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg north of Berlin between 1942 and 1945. Despite the accused’s advanced age, he was found to be able to stand trial according to prosecutors, who said the trial would be televised. These charges following those made in recent days against a concentration camp secretary accused of being an accomplice in the murder of 10,000 people. This is the first such case in recent years made against a woman who worked at a Nazi concentration camp.

Reader’s question: Will the Lithuania and the EU find the will to try or condemn members of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Provisional Government who adopted the Nazis’ plan to exterminate Jews and carried it out, who voluntarily elected to take part in the Holocaust?

Full text in Lithuanian here.

2021-02-11

Sent to Siberia Despite Rescuing Jews

Photo: Lithuanian deportees en route to Siberia. Center: Family of B. and I. Jablonskiai. The only known photograph in Lithuania of a deportation cattle wagon.

by Romualdas Beniušis

This year marks 70 years since the third large post-war deportation operation Osen (Autumn) carried out by the Soviet security structures (MGB) on October 2 and 3, 1951, during which more than 16,000 people deemed “bourgeoisie,” including 5,000 children, were packed into cattle cars and deported to Siberia.

At that time, 39 children didn’t reach their places of exile. Their deaths marked the way along which Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. This time, the lists of deportees were entrusted to the local government administration and Party committees because it had become ever more difficult to find the “bourgeoisie” needed for carrying out the deportation plans. Thus the opportunity arose to include on the list of people to be deported those the local government didn’t like, the more educated, and even people who lived in the cities, carrying out personal grudges and to seize the property of the deportees.

Since only a few days passed between the confirmation of the lists and the beginning of deportations, the deportations began to be carried out without formal deportation cases which were drawn up later. The barely-literate locals who compiled the lists and usually foreign MGB officials who drafted the formal cases made endless mistakes in those documents, distorting surnames, dates of birth and so on, but this did not become an obstruction on the way to Siberia.

2021-02-112021-03-04

Condolences

With sadness we report the death of Elijas Šapsajus Cholemas. He was born in Kaunas in 1926 and was 15 when war came. Imprisoned with his parents, aunt and uncle in the Kaunas ghetto, he was later sent to the Stutthof and then the Kaufering, Landsberg and Dachau concentration camps. He and his father returned to Lithuania in June of 1945. They lost 31 family members and relatives to the Holocaust. Despite his bitter experience, the late Elijas Šapsajus Cholemas remained an extraordinarily sensitive, warm and sincere person filled with empathy and always ready to help his fellow man. He was an active member of the Jewish community and the Union of Former Ghetto Prisoners. He fought illness for some time before his death. We wish him eternal peace and rest. Thank you for sharing the road of life with us.

2021-02-11

Lithuanian History Institute Director Tells Parliamentary Speaker Genocide Center Planned Propaganda Campaigns

15min.lt

Speaker of Lithuanian parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen met representatives Tuesday of universities and the Lithuanian History Institute to discuss the situation at Lithuania’s Genocide Center, following a boycott of Genocide Center announced by these institutions. Lithuanian History Institute director Alvydas Nikžentaitis said the problem is not just a domestic one and needs a final solution.

Historians from Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, Klaipėda University and the Lithuanian History Institute sent the speaker a letter complaining the new leadership of Genocide Center under Adas Jakubauskas after he was appointed in February of 2020 had led to a primitive politicization of sensitive and painful events of the past without taking sources into account. They said they could no longer work with Genocide Center under those conditions, and didn’t agree with unprofessional statements made by representatives of the Genocide Center.

Nikžentaitis said there had been indications very long before Jakubauskas’s appointment that things weren’t right at the Center, and that his colleagues had made numerous complaints. Nikžentaitis said some of them were even persecuted for expressing their opinion regarding the Center. Nikžentaitis listed among other complaints that there were allegedly discussions inside Genocide Center that if the current director of the Center’s Department of Historical Research [Arūnas Bubnys] withdrew from the post, he would be given a different post, while behind the scenes agreement was reached on replacing him with another person more obedient to the leadership.

“So basically this was preparing the ground, let’s say, for preparing opinions very far from academic at the Center, so that the Center would be ready to carry out specific propaganda goals,” Nikžentaitis said.

On the meeting with the speaker of parliament, Nikžentaitis said they discussed how to change the existing situation. He added that in a certain sense the problems at Genocide Center were pre-programmed from its very inception.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

2021-02-102021-02-19

World Jewish Congress Dismayed at Polish Court Ruling against Holocaust Historians

Press Release
February 9, 2021

NEW YORK–World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder expressed his dismay following the announcement of a verdict in a Polish libel case against historians prof. Barbara Engelking and prof. Jan Grabowski for their scholarly work in which they cited the testimony of a survivor regarding the actions of a Polish mayor during the Holocaust.

Commenting on the decision, Lauder said, “As someone who has been deeply engaged with Poland for more than three decades, I am dismayed that a Warsaw court ruled against historians prof. Barbara Engelking and pProf. Jan Grabowski in the misguided libel case that was brought against them. It is simply unacceptable that historians should be afraid of citing credible testimony of Holocaust survivors.

“This outcome does not bode well for the future of historical research in Poland and sends precisely the wrong message to those who seek to stifle the work of scholars. I hope that today’s verdict will be overturned on appeal, and that the day will come when decisions regarding the integrity of history will once again be left to historians and not politicians or judges.”

2021-02-102021-02-10

Mass Murders in Utena: Memories of the Holocaust

Photo: Just a few buildings witnessing to the Jewish past still stand in Utena.

Translated to Lithuanian by Vytautas Ridikas from Massacres in Utena by Tsozdik Bleiman writing in Russian

§§§

As the only living witness left, I am able to share some special memories.

My father Jakov Bleiman, who was formerly a rabbi in Crimea, performed the same duties in Utena, where my brother-in-law Efraim Yudelovich also lived with the family. At the beginning of the war I lived in Kaunas.

I decided to see my parents and then, if the right conditions were in place, to evacuate with the entire family. As it turned out there was no way to leave for somewhere, because just as I arrived in the city the Germans entered. Our fate became clear: we were all condemned to death.

Thursday. The first day of the German regime. Dozens of Jews are herded to work, led to the Germans and their Lithuanian helpers. The work is meaningless and insignificant, just in order to deride the Jews, sending them around all day with brooms, shovels and other implements.

2021-02-092021-03-04

Condolences

Igor Gorodishcher passed away February 7, 2021. He was born in 1955. We send our condolences to his brother Gennady at this painful time.

2021-02-09

Lithuanian Media Respond to Changes at Genocide Center

The Lithuanian media report several stories related to recent internal dissent and the resignation of Vidmantas Valiušaitis at the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, usually called the Genocide Center, a state-financed arbiter of the official Lithuanian version of history.

Delfi.lt reported Lithuanian speaker of parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen said it was too early to talk of replacing Genocide Center’s recently-appointed director Adas Jakubauskas, but called the problems there real, and said she thought a parliamentary commission should be formed to look into complaints which came to light last week when staff historians at the state institution published an open letter issued as an appeal to the speaker of parliament, complaining history was being politicized under the current director, see https://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/cmilyte-nielsen-kelti-genocido-centro-vadovybes-kaitos-klausima-tikrai-per-anksti.d?id=86384653 for the complete story in Lithuanian. Long-time observers note the Genocide Center has always been politicized and that is its main mission as defined in law, to present a politicized version of history.

Delfi.lt also carried an in-depth account of a discussion held last week on Lithuania’s Žinių Radijas talk radio station between Vytautas Bruveris, a writer and journalist who has won much public respect for his reporting and editorials over the years at Lithuania’s Lietuvos rytas newspaper, and Vidmantas Valiušaitis, a writer with an ultra-nationalist view of Lithuanian history who has worked as a newspaper writer and whose work has been featured in the official magazine of the Lithuanian military, Karys. Valiušaitis’s appointment to a post created especially for him by the new director of Genocide Center was one of the main complaints in the appeal staff and historians sent to the speaker of parliament. The text in Lithuanian can be found here:

2021-02-092021-02-15

Bringing Bagels Back to Vilnius

by Wailana Kalama

After a long absence, the Jewish staple has returned to the Lithuanian capital

Most food historians place the origin of the bagel somewhere vaguely in the Jewish alleys of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In those days in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius–also known as Vilna, the city once dubbed the “Jerusalem of the North”–bagels were ubiquitous, sold on the streets, and in the bakeries and markets. In modern times, however, the bagel had all but been erased from popular memory. Until now.

For centuries, the city’s Old Town was home to a thriving community of Litvaks, as local Jews referred to themselves. The district was lauded for its cultured elite and a Great Synagogue that attracted scholars from all over Europe. All that changed with the Holocaust, during which 95% of Lithuanian Jews were deported and murdered. Now, all that remains in the Old Town are monuments to what once was: street signs in Yiddish, inscriptions educating about the ghetto, a bust of the famed intellectual Vilna Gaon.

2021-02-05

Happy Birthday to Maja Burštein

Maja celebrated a milestone birthday February 4. She is a chemist and teacher, a wonderful housewife and an active member of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community. It is our pleasure to wish her a very happy birthday and much health, a happy family and many wonderful moments with her grandchildren.

2021-02-05

Condolences

We have learned the sad news of the death of Jakovas Gurinas’s mother in the United States. Our deepest condolences to her family and friends.

2021-02-03

Condolences

Fayerlakh ensemble musician Igoris Dolgopolovas has died. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and members of the Fayerlakh Jewish song and dance ensemble extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends.

2021-02-03

Condolences

Aida Galvanauskienė passed away January 18, 2021. She was born in 1966. Our deepest condolences to her son Erlandas and daughter Estela on the loss of their beloved mother, and to brother Artūras on the loss of his sister.

2021-02-03

Valiušaitis Quits as Advisor to Director of Genocide Center

Vidmantas Valiušaitis announced he is quitting the post of advisor to the general director of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania (Genocide Center). He served in the post for five-and-a-half months. Valiušaitis said a letter by Center staff was partially responsible for his leaving.

The webpage of Lithuanian Public Radio and Television reported last week on an appeal a group of Genocide Center researchers made to their general director Adas Jakubauskas and parliamentary leaders, complaining research had become ideologized and politicized following a change in leadership.

They also complained of a stressful and emotional work environment, and said experienced historians were leaving because of pressure from the leadership. Their appeal singled out Vidmantas Valiušaitis as an issue of concern, saying a special post had been created for him specifically with job requirements tailored especially for him, introducing a skills requirement which was unconnected with the activities carried out by the Genocide Center.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

2021-02-03

Lithuanian President Says MP’s Statements on Holocaust “Regretful Misunderstanding”

by G. Jaruševičiūtė, ELTA

Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda criticized scandalous statements on the Holocaust by Conservative MP Valdas Rakutis. He said he regretted people with such great political responsibility sometimes make these sorts of statements painful to the families of Holocaust victims.

“It’s really a regretful misunderstanding made on this very important commemorative day when we all again bow and stand in memory with the victims, the Jewish people during World War II. And it’s a shame that we sometimes hear these kinds of speculations by people with great political responsibility which cause further pain to relatives of the victims, and pain to our partners,” president Nausėda said at a press conference at the Office of President.

He expressed hope the correct conclusions would be drawn from Rakutis’s statements.

“I hope the conclusion will be drawn that this person’s opinion, specially that of Mr. Valdas Rakutis, in no way expresses the opinion of the party, the parliamentary faction or the parliament. I think there have been sufficient comments made and denials issued from the head of the party, but still we apologize for the lack of understanding and request no hurried conclusions be made,” the president said.

Full report in Lithuanian here.

2021-02-03

Time for Genocide Center to Halt Mob Rule and Communist Censorship

by Arkadijus Vinokuras

The events shaking the Genocide Center in the last few days are the logical result of several years of flawed policy. This is what happens when responsibility for research into and assessment of historical events is passed into the hands of politically-agitated profaners. According to the professional historians who are finally quitting the Genocide Center, this leads to: “the disappearance of the distinction between the work of professional specialists and amateurish initiatives. In terms of both historical research and the field of commemoration and the authoring and publication of documents, there is a danger that this will become an imitation of academic and expert work and a profanation of academic research.”

So, the honorable historians of the Genocide Center confirmed in a statement they released what I have been repeating for several years now: there simply cannot be a state institution whose task it is to perform objective studies in connection with the history of our country, if it is led by radicals appointed by politicians rather than professional historians. All these sorts of self-declared historians–geologists, philologists and mechanics–cannot prepare properly findings of history for the courts and other important institutions. All the more so if they don’t even consult with professional historians.

The result of this dishonest and likely criminal activity (when history is written based not on facts but on politically-motivated interpretations and myths) are findings of history, binding legally. Thus Kazys Škirpa, who collaborated with the Nazis, dreamt of a Nazi Lithuania and drove the Jews out, is proclaimed a Lithuanian hero. The same goes for Jonas Noreika, who for two years acted as a Holocaust perpetrator, and if his heroization isn’t enough, now he has become “a rescuer of Jews.” And those Jews, allegedly, “themselves, of their own volition, barricaded themselves in ghettos.” So did other Lithuanians as well “themselves, of their own will, yearned to leave for Siberia?” Isn’t it pathetically funny, the Genocide Center’s self-justification is “our Holocaust was different, and collaboration with the Nazis was also different than in other places?” Another example: Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, who was, it seems, “vindicated and rehabilitated by US institutions.” This is how the brains of Lithuanian people with no connection are washed, people who find it very difficult to determine where the truth lies, and where the lie does.

2021-02-022021-02-15