Antisemitism, Racism, Homophobia

In 2010:

16 February 2010.  The annual Uzgavenes festival, celebrated throughout Lithuania, again featured costumes and behavior making fun of – and perpetuating the worst stereotypes of –  Roma and Jews ('and monsters'). Roma and Jews comprise two of the country's smallest and weakest minorities. Most of both communities were murdered during the Holocaust by the Nazis (with massive voluntary participation in the killings by locals). Today, progressive forces continue to live in hope that political, academic, legal, religious and cultural opinion makers in the country will rise to the occasion of explaining the essence, evil and dangers of such rampant racism unconvincingly disguised as the majority's 'national ethnographic tradition'. See below at 2008 (→ 6 Feb) for Michael Casper's Forward report on that year's event. Photo by Evaldas Butkevičius.

In 2010, Uzgavenes coincided with February 16th Independence Day celebrations. In some areas, Nazi symbols were touted. Occasionally the practice is nowadays packaged as the reclamation of the prewar swastika as a proposed symbol of the nation. In this image, residents of Klaipeda celebrate 'classic swastika art'. Photo courtesy of  DMN. Report here.

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27 January 2010.  On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the international section ('World') of the popular mass-circulation daily Vakaro zinios led off with the article 'Jews don't understand why they are not liked' by an unnamed author. The first sentence starts with a reference to 'the Jewish community' which is locally taken to refer to today's Vilnius Jewish community. The article goes on to explain antisemitism as the result of the previous year's conflict in Gaza, and contains a large photograph of a scene of devastation there.  Translation into English.

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27 January 2010.  Also on Holocaust Remembrance Day, state prosecutors came to the Jewish Community's premises at Pylimo Street 4 to harass the community's leaders for information about an additional Holocaust Survivor  (85 years old, resident in Tel Aviv), whom they propose to 'investigate' for unspecified reasons. Story on front page, and on Blaming the Victims (→ 2010, 27 Jan).

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20 January 2010.  The Shabad statue in Vilnius's old town (wartime territory of the Vilna Ghetto) was defaced in a paint attack. Report on Delfi.  The sculpture, unveiled in May 2007, commemorates Dr Tsemakh Shabad (1864-1935), a near-legendary figure in Vilna Jewish lore. Upsetting as such events are, it was rather more painful for the Jewish community when the former director of the 'Litvak Foundation', who had worked tirelessly to organize the monument, came out with a highly disturbing article last summer (see below, 2009 → 16 July). Photo by Kirilas Cachovskis.

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In 2009:

31 January 2009.  Image from the front page of Respublika, depicting the Jew and the Gay holding up the globe, under the headline 'Kas valdo pasauli?' ('Who controls the world?'), followed on p. 3 by a racist, antisemitic and homophobic article by the editor.

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21  March 2009.  After human rights advocate and journalist Andrius Navickas lodged a protest against the publication of the antisemitic and homophobic cartoon, a caricature of his face and body was inserted into the 'Jews and Gays control the world' cartoon and published on the front page of Vakaro zinios. It appeared along with the article 'What is the Gay Manifesto?'  English translation.

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29 May 2009.  Part of a list of Jewish victims of the Vilna Ghetto (including resistance hero Yechiel Sheinboim) appears instead of the captioned list of alleged murderers in the Baltic Times (zoom-in). The reporter was wholly innocent; a still unidentified source provided the wrong list. An obscure and ambiguous correction appeared the following week.

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10 June 2009.  Headline and image from page 2 of Vakaro zinios: a photo of the Culture Ministry building, with the caption and article suggesting that 'the Jews' are working to take it away from the government. The article is headed 'Lithuanian law being corrected by the Jews' with the word 'Jews' in rather large type.

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June 2009.  A student was asked at the oral defense of his/her thesis: 'Did the Jews pay you to do this topic?' There was no comment from any committee member, and no written protest from the student's supervisor or sponsoring department. Note: The student's topic had no connection to Holocaust issues.

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14 July 2009.  Image from the front page of the daily Vakaro zinios: a photomontage of the elected 80 year old chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania and a Soviet-era abacus. The headline and accompanying article on p. 4 suggest that 'the Jews' are plotting to expropriate money from the country.

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16 July 2009.  'Jewish property and a burnt-out land' on the country's main news portal Delfi.lt by the former director of the 'Litvak Foundation' (Litvaku fondas), whose accomplishments include the projects to erect statues of famed Jewish personalities Tsemakh Shabad and Romain Gary; image published with the article. Text includes the statement: 'There are about 3000 Jews in Lithuania, and one must keep in mind that only some 1000 are really Lithuanian Jews (heirs and successors to the former Jewish communities), rather than aliens from the East.'  English translation.

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29 September 2009.  'Memory being trampled. Neither our Parliament nor our diplomats want to defend Lithuania's heroes from Jewish libel' by Ignas Jacauskas. This multi-part feature on the front page extends to an editorial (p. 5) and to a 'Voice of the Nation' feature (p. 3), where Ruta the student, Laura the housekeeper, Raimonda the know-it-all, Irenijus the internet specialist and Juozas the construction worker express their views at the reporter's behest.  English translation.

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28 October 2009.  Minutes after the German Embassy in Vilnius issued a press release announcing that it had awarded Germany's Federal Cross of Merit to Holocaust survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (born 1922), Lithuania's main news portal, Delfi.lt, published a bileful attack replete with libelous and ridiculous accusations about her 'war crimes' (in effect trying to blame the Holocaust's victims, a frequent ploy of the Baltic region's Double Genocide Industry that is pushing the Prague Declaration in the European Parliament). The campaign against Holocaust survivors was launched by the antisemitic press and picked up by state prosecutors, starting in 2006 (see Blaming the Victims and the 28 Oct 2009 entry on the home page). English translation. The Lithuanian original appeared with this caricature of anti-Nazi resistance veteran Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, whose entire family perished in the Holocaust. It is not known why the Yiddish institute's website contains no mention of the award, or of the unseemly attack against its own beloved librarian, who has been with the VYI since its inception in 2001. Speculation has centered on pressure 'from above' and fear of falling into disfavor with powers that be. On a related note, there is growing international interest in preservation of the underground partisan fort where Fania lived from September 1943 until the region's liberation in July 1944. Authorities in the country seem to wish the fort to disappear. Fania is the country's last Holocaust survivor who actually lived there. She continues to accompany visitors and students there. The international effort to save this remarkable Holocaust site is spearheaded by Samuel Gruber's Jewish Art & Monuments site.

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14 November 2009.  One of the novel forms of antisemitism to emerge from the post-Soviet Baltics revels in diminishing Nazism and 'growing' Communism (often regarded as a 'Jewish plot') in a macabre equation, to produce a model of 'equality' for naive westerners and the European Parliament, while at home gloating at perceived successes in actually presenting Communism as 'worse'.  At the root of the project is the wish to obfuscate the Holocaust and the dismal Baltic record of collaboration, while seeking to cast aspersions on the victims and the few survivors by tacitly encouraging the canard 'All Jews are Communists'. This graphic, a less-than-mature red-brown 'scorecard' (with the foregone result of the 'game' provided: Communism 1, Nazism 0), was offered up yet again by the mainstream news portal Delfi.lt, in the course of an attack on President Shimon Peres of Israel for having expressed his view that Nazism and Communism are not the same (English translation of the Delfi.lt article here). In any case, President Peres's actual remarks  in Lietuvos rytas (English here) were taken out of context and distorted.

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18 November 2009.  According to a front page report (continued on page 3), in the mass circulation daily Vakaro zinios, headlined: ‘Important News. Jews won’t slander us Anymore’, a shutdown of Holocaust Studies is called for to ‘shut up Jews slandering Lithuanians’. Specifically, the article, in an antisemitic tone, explains that the Genocide Center will itself now determine which locals participated in the Holocaust. English translation. For the overall tone at the Genocide Museum, on Vilnius’s central boulevard, see below (→ 5 July 2008). Antisemitism and rejection of the internationally known narrative of the Holocaust are closely interlinked in the Baltic region, and to some extent, throughout Eastern Europe.

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In 2008:

6 February 2008.  Report in the Forward by Michael Casper on the annual public portrayal of Jews and Roma during the Uzgavenes carnival in central Vilnius. (Image courtesy of Michael Casper.) The report notes the attitudes of the state sponsored Center for Ethnic Activity and the Vilnius City Municipality.

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11 March 2008.  Video clip of the neo-Nazi march on the capital's central boulevard. The march featured chants of 'Juden raus' and a song including 'Take a stick and kill that little Jew'.  Marchers boasted the 'Lithuanian swastika' (with added lines). There were also anti-Russian and anti-Polish chants. Second clip comprising the somber, dignified response of the chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania plus more material from the march, including the apparent amusement of onlooking police. These videos appear thanks to the bold Lietuvos rytas journalist Lukas Pileckas. Photo by Vidmantas Balkunas. Leading politicians failed to condemn the march for over a week, when foreign pressures forced statements.

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20 March 2008.  'Jews are not only Clever People' by Algirdas Berkevicius in Lietuvos aidas (front page story, continued on p. 3). English translation.

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31 March 2008.  'Zionists' by former member of the Lithuanian parliament Dr Ruta Gajauskaite [one part of a series]. English translation.

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7 June 2008.  'The Holocaust' by Dr Ruta Gajauskaite. English translation.

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17 June 2008.  An article in the prestigious  mainstream daily Lieutvos rytas is headlined 'The Jews Can't Digest [or: 'mouth'] all of their Property'. PDF.

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5 July 2008.  Exhibition panel at the state sponsored Genocide Museum, exemplifying the nexus of Holocaust trivialization and antisemitism: 'In Auschwitz we were given some spinach and a little bread'. Zoom-in of the text (2008 exhibit).

The permanent exhibit includes a post-Holocaust caricature of a Soviet jeep being driven by Lenin, Stalin and 'the Jew Yankel'  (with no comment on the antisemitic portrayal). Sample of another antisemitic exhibit; & another. Such is sometimes the local face of the 'Soviet-Nazi equivalence' that is disseminated at the European Parliament via the Prague Declaration and other resolutions.

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5 August 2008.  'The rabbis are wreaking havoc in Lithuania' by Professor Jonas Ciulevicius in  Ukininko patarejas. English translation.

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9 August 2008.  'Are God's chosen people always right?' by Juozas Ivanauskas in Laisvas laikrastis.  English translation. And, in the same issue: 'Globalism' by former parliament member V. Petkevicius.  English translation.

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9-10 August 2008.  Images (on delfi.lt) of the neo-Nazi paint attack on the central Vilnius building of the Jewish Community of Lithuania on the night of 9-10 August 2008; additional image. (photos by Milan Chersonski, editor of Jerusalem of Lithuania). There have been no arrests. Yiddish speakers in town quip that the police must be too busy looking for Fania, Rachel and Yitzhak...

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23-30 August 2008.  'All goats climb on a bent willow tree'  by member of parliament Julius Veselka in Laisvas laikrastis. English translation.

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25 Sept 2008.  While closing 'part' of its 'investigation' against Holocaust survivor and eminent historian Dr Yitzhak Arad, the Prosecution Service of the Republic of Lithuania issues a public call 'to the society [public] for assistance' searching for 'people who can give evidence or have important information'. More incredibly, the prosecutors' press release attacks Dr Arad's famous memoir The Partisan, a classic of Holocaust resistance memoir literature, on the basis of an anonymous 'Doctor of Humanitarian Sciences (expert-historian)'. And so, the prosecution service that never achieved the slightest punishment of a single Nazi war criminal in connection with the genocide of 200,000 Lithuanian Jews, leaves for posterity its call to the public for 'evidence' against the anti-Nazi resistance hero Yitzhak Arad along with a gutless attack on the scholar's book based on an anonymous trasher. Perhaps the prosecutors' mysterious 'Doctor of Humanitarian Sciences (Expert-Historian)' will muster the courage to come forward and identify himself for history?

NOTE: This 25 Sept 2008 official press release has been the last word from prosecutors on the Arad affair. Rumors and claims of the case having been properly closed and an apology issued to Dr Arad (and to Yad Vashem, of which he was founding director) are sadly without basis and constitute misinformation [as of date of this entry: 22 Feb 2010]. Moreover, there has to date been not one public word on the affair from the 'Red-Brown Commission', which is housed in the Prime Minister's office, about its own former (and founding) member. Commission's site here; it continues to list Dr Arad under 'membership suspended'.