Tale of Two Lands: Ukraine’s and Lithuania’s State Policies of Glorifying...
◊ Israel’s Ambassador Joel Lion in Ukraine Boldly Condemns Annual Parade Glorifying Holocaust Collaborator Stepan Bandera; JTA’s Cnaan Liphshiz Reports But at same time, Israeli Foreign Ministry...
View ArticleYitzhak Arad, World War II Partisan Hero, Veteran of Israel’s War of...
Yitzhak Arad (originally Rudnitzky), a native of Svintsyán (Švenčionys, Lithuania, some 90 km north of Vilnius) passed away peacefully in Tel Aviv on Thursday. He was laid to rest Friday at Kibbutz...
View ArticleJerusalem Debate on Antisemitism in Lithuania: Deputy Foreign Minister and...
Debate in Jerusalem, at World Forum for Combating Antisemitism, at Session on Holocaust Denial and Distortion in Eastern Europe ◊ I: Summary document released by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry boasts...
View ArticleIsrael Faced Some Delicate Post-Holocaust Issues During Lithuanian PM’s...
Efraim Zuroff asked in the Jerusalem Post that the Baltic state’s campaign to revise Holocaust history — and its plans to plonk a convention center in the middle of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery — be on...
View ArticleAs Lithuania’s President Visits Israel
O P I N I O N ◊ As Lithuania’s president Dalia Grybauskaitė arrives for her visit to Israel, we all join in wishing her entire team a terrific and productive trip. From the Litvak point of view (the...
View ArticleLithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė Completes Official Visit to Israel
LITHUANIA TRIBUNE / DELFI; JERUSALEM POST Hopes Dashed She Would Announce Cancellation of “Vilnius Convention Center in the Old Jewish Cemetery” and Promise to Remove Public Memorials for Holocaust...
View ArticleDid Prime Minister Netanyahu Really “Okay” the Vilnius “Conference Center in...
[from the day’s front page] AN ISRAELI-LITHUANIAN MYSTERY In September, during his trip to Israel, the Lithuanian prime minister reported back home with triumph that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin...
View ArticleIsrael’s Foreign Ministry Faces a Lithuanian Dilemma
DOCUMENTS | ISRAEL | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | GENOCIDE CENTER ◊ As the Lithuanian government-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (popular moniker for the “International Commission for...
View ArticleA Month After Kaunas March Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators, Israeli...
ISRAEL CHRONICLE | ISRAEL SECTION | NEO-NAZI MARCHES | KAUNAS MARCHES ◊ KAUNAS—One month after this year’s infamous Independence Day march in central Kaunas that featured a banner glorifying a...
View ArticleProfessor Dov Levin’s Findings on the Outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust
DOCUMENTS | HISTORY ◊ The following is the first column of page 898 of Professor Dov Levin’s entry, “Lithuania,” in volume 3 of Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Israel Gutman, editor-in-chief;...
View ArticleLatest Judicial Abuse of An East European Country’s Redefinition of...
◊ DEFINITION OF GENOCIDE | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | DOUBLE GENOCIDE SECTION | THE GENOCIDE CENTER IN VILNIUS | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS Kaunas Court Affirms Sentence of Two Years...
View ArticleEditor’s Comment on a Yad Vashem Group Visiting Lithuania
◊ The following comment appeared on Facebook today: ◊ Dovid Katz YAD VASHEM’S “political department” and the group that visited Lithuania last week: Thanks to both members of the group who quietly...
View ArticleVanagaitė and Zuroff’s “Mūsiškiai”
[last update] For the first time, a Lithuanian author teamed up with an Israeli Holocaust scholar in search for the truth about widespread local enthusiasm, seventy-five years ago, for mass murder of...
View ArticleYiddish Loses Last Global Position as Symbolic “First Jewish Language” in...
OPINION | COMMEMORATION OF DESTROYED COMMUNITIES | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | IDENTITY-THEFT LITVAK INDUSTRY by Dovid Katz ◊ VILNIUS—For close to three decades, Vilnius has been the...
View ArticleRun-Up to Lithuania’s Sept. 23rd 2016 Holocaust Commemoration Day
Events in the Week of Lithuania’s Official September 23rd Holocaust Commemoration Day Vilnius mayor — and nation’s president and prime minister — face a stark choice on whether to speak out with moral...
View ArticleSeptember 23rd Events in the Vilnius Region
DEFENDING HISTORY WAS THERE Annual Sept. 23 Official Commemoration Ceremony at the Ponár (Paneriai) Mass Murder Site Outside Vilnius, Lithuania Historic Breakthrough as Lithuanian Jewish Community’s...
View ArticleWorld Famous Litvak Rabbi Condemns Plans for Congress Center in Old Vilna...
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES ◊ Rabbi Tzvi Rotberg, One of the world’s top Litvak rabbis and head of the world-famous yeshiva (rabbinical academy) Beth Meir, in Bnei-Brak,...
View ArticleWhen “Putin” Becomes an Excuse for Hitler-Glorification
OPINION by Dovid Katz This article appeared today in Jewish Currents: ◊ A recent Washington Post editorial rightfully takes Russia and China to task for persecuting those who dare challenge the state’s...
View ArticleConflict of Interest as Red-Brown Commission Chief Legitimized by Meeting...
OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | ISRAEL AFFAIRS ◊ VILNIUS—The 22 November edition of the Jerusalem Post carried the following news item about an international meeting at the Peres Center for Peace...
View ArticleDov Levin (1925 — 2016)
PROF. DOV LEVIN Kaunas (Kovno) 1925 — Jerusalem 2016 ◊ His life. Author of The Litvaks, the Lithuania volume of Yad Vashem’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities (Pinkas Hakehillot), and numerous books...
View ArticleWhen the Picture and the Headline Tell Opposite Stories
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS ◊ by Dovid Katz (Vilnius) ◊ Full credit to the Forward’s Paul Berger, who has, as ever, sought to be meticulously fair in his new article on some...
View ArticleKaunas, Lithuania: Run-Up to the February 16th 2017 Neo-Nazi March on...
Kaunas Mayor & City Council Deciding whether to again allow neo-nazis sporting banners adulating Holocaust collaborators to take over the city center on Lithuania’s cherished February 16th...
View ArticleHonest Error at German Embassy in Vilnius?
OPINION | USE AND ABUSE OF PONÁR | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS ◊ VILNIUS—“There is nothing new under the sun,” as the Good Book says (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Sure, on occasion, Irish...
View ArticleNew “Litvak” Postage Stamp is Disturbing for Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust...
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | IDENTITY THEFT OF LITVAK HERITAGE | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | SYMBOLOGY ◊ by Dovid Katz ◊ One does not have to be a theoretical champion of Free...
View ArticleDouble Genocide: New and Official Form of Holocaust Denial
OPINION | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | POLITICS OF MEMORY ◊ by Dovid Katz This article appeared today in Jewish Currents: ◊ America was jolted this past summer not only by a neo-Nazi event in Charlottesville,...
View ArticleJoseph Melamed, Major Leader of International Litvak Community, Dies in Tel...
OBITUARIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS ◊ See Defending History’s Joe Melamed section ◊ The Real Litvak Champion of the 21st century: Joe Melamed, who passed away Thursday in Tel Aviv at 93 was the genuine...
View ArticleJoe Melamed, Litvak Champion (Images from the Last Years)
צו די שלשים פון יוסף (יאָסקע) מלמד ז″ל ◊ Memories of Joe Melamed Defending History MORE ON JOE MELAMED (1924-2017) ◊ DEFENDING HISTORY’S JOE MELAMED SECTION. Scroll to end to review upwards in...
View Article21st Century Lowpoint for Israeli Diplomacy? Ambassador Poses with Photos of...
OPINION | ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | HONORING COLLABORATORS | LEGACY OF JOE MELAMED | LEGACY OF DOV LEVIN | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND THE HOLOCAUST ◊ by Dovid Katz (Vilnius) ◊...
View ArticleTwo Perspicacious Comments in Today’s Issue of “The Weekly of Vilnius”
OPINION | MEDIA WATCH | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND HOLOCAUST ISSUES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED ◊ VILNIUS—With...
View ArticleTake Note, Historians of Israeli Diplomacy: Betraying the Truth about the...
OPINION | ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | HONORING COLLABORATORS | LEGACY OF JOE MELAMED | LEGACY OF DOV LEVIN | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND THE HOLOCAUST ◊ by Dovid Katz (Vilnius) ◊ VILNIUS—We...
View ArticleChief Rabbi of Israel Pleads with Lithuania’s President to Abandon Plans for...
DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CPJCE ◊ VILNIUS—Copies began to circulate in recent days of the...
View ArticleAn Opportunity for Leaders of Israel’s “March of the Living” in Vilnius
OPINION | ISRAEL ISSUES | PONÁR | POLITICS OF MEMORY ◊ VILNIUS—This week, Wednesday the 23rd of May, as for a number of years, Vilnius and its Jewish community will be welcoming a group of truly...
View ArticleLingering Discussions of Netanyahu’s 23-26 August 2018 Visit to Lithuania
ISRAEL PAGE | ISRAEL SECTION | LOWPOINT IN ISRAEL’S PROUD DIPLOMATIC HISTORY? ◊ Debbie Maimon in Yated Ne’eman on the “Pandora’s Box” Opened; Efraim Zuroff’s Critique of Netanyahu’s Acquiescence to...
View ArticleSept. 23rd Ponár Memorial and Pope Francis’s Visit to Vilna Ghetto Memorial
OPINION | EVENTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE ◊ ◊ VILNIUS—The two major “September 23rd” events today in Vilnius were the annual commemoration...
View ArticleIsrael’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, Speaks Out with Bold Integrity on...
◊ Ukraine: Where the Israeli Ambassador Stands Up with Integrity for What is Right ◊ See reports on HE Ambassador Joel Lion’s public stance in: The Times of Israel & Kyiv Post. A “day and night...
View ArticleIsrael’s Interior Minister Protests Desecration of Old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery
OPINION | ISRAEL CHRONICLE | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS | CEMETERIES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION ◊ JERUSALEM—In a...
View ArticleIsrael Chronicle
[most recent update] Israeli Foreign Policy and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe (1990 — 2021) JUMP TO LATEST ◊ Debate Tracker: 2021 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009...
View ArticleCould the Israeli Foreign Ministry be More Sensitive to Yiddish Language,...
OPINION | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | LITVAK ISSUES | ISRAEL CHRONICLE | ISRAEL SECTION ◊ by Dovid Katz VILNIUS—The lovely idea to name a square in modern Vilnius for the State of Israel is a fine gesture of...
View ArticlePainfully, Yad Vashem Heads for Vilnius Event, Again ‘Legitimizing’ the...
OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION (SECTION) | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | LITHUANIA | YAD VASHEM & LITHUANIA | ISRAEL ISSUES (SECTION) ◊ Prof. Dina Porat of Yad Vashem will chair the Vilnius...
View ArticleYad Vashem Director Dani Dayan, Speaking in Lithuanian Parliament, Boldly...
[UPDATES TO 3 OCT. 2023] OPINION | IT PAYS TO DEFEND HISTORY | YAD VASHEM AND LITHUANIA | ISRAEL SECTION | ISRAEL DEBATE CHRONICLE ◊ by Dovid Katz ◊ The modest but resolute Defending History community,...
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