It was August in Lithuania. I, twenty-four years old, sat on the floor with the other students. We spoke in Yiddish among ourselves, but our voices were kept soft; the authorities couldn’t know about our meeting. A man with a beard, a noted scholar, stood up and told us why he had not spoken with us before, why we had to meet discreetly in this apartment, high above the streets of Vilna. Things were happening, the man said, and those with power wanted to cover them up. But he had to let us know.
Sounds eerily familiar? It actually wasn’t that long ago. Full disclosure: I’m still twenty-four years old. This was August 2009.
This summer, my last as a student at UCLA School of Law, I left for what is today called Vilnius, but what had once been known to its Jews as Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania. The city’s Yiddish Program, founded at Oxford University in 1982 by the renowned American born-scholar Dovid Katz, attracts scholars from all over the world. It was in hope of studying with Professor Katz, whom I admire deeply, that I had made the trip to Lithuania.
But when I arrived, Katz was nowhere to be found. When I and other students who had come to study with him asked where he was, all we received was uneasy laughter and a dismissive wave of the hand. It was only at the very end of my stay that I found out the truth. In order to sanitize their own involvement in the Holocaust, the Lithuanian government has embarked on a campaign to portray itself, having been under Soviet rule until 1991, as a victim of genocide, too.
The Red-Brown Resolutions, declaring Nazism and Communism as equivalent phenomena, with the purpose of obfuscating the Holocaust into simply an event among other events, have been presented to the European Parliament, starting in 2008.
The Lithuanian government has now made it official policy to target veterans of the Soviet partisans in the forest against the Nazis, a courageous effort vividly depicted in last year’s “Defiance”, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. But only Jews, who in fact had been a minority among the partisans, have actually been harassed by police and defamed in the press. Today in their eighties and nineties and honored everywhere else in the civilized world, these heroes of humanity are being targeted as enemies of the people. In order to set the record straight, Professor Dovid Katz started a website, www.holocaustinthebaltics.com.
After he objected to this public defamation of little old ladies, Professor Katz was forbidden to lecture or even speak with the students of his own Summer Program, which is why we had to meet him in a private apartment, away from the university on that Monday night in August. At least at that clandestine meeting I was finally able to meet my hero, who generously took me out for coffee and gave me as a gift all of his books that I didn’t yet have, with a beautiful inscription in each of them.
By the time we had finished, well past midnight, it was already Tuesday. I looked at my watch. I would have to start packing now in order to start my journey out of Lithuania in the morning, I thought. Law school starts tomorrow.
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A very interesting article. Thank you, Josh. I am director of the Summer Literary Seminars international programs — http://www.sumlitsem.org — including the one we just had in Vilnius this past summer. Here is an account of it in a September issue of the Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/putting-the-lit-into-lithuania/article1275794/.
The essential part of the SLS-Lithuania-09 program was the independent, self-contained program component, Jewish Lithuania, organized and directed by Dovid Katz, widely recognized indeed as the world’s leading Yiddishist and pre-eminent authority on the history and culture of the Jewish people of Lithuania and Eastern Europe. His course was exceptionally powerful, and currently Professor Katz and I are trying to expand and deepen the Jewish Lithuania program in Vilnius, transform it into a permanent academic/cultural entity based in Vilnius and dedicated to preserving and disseminating knowledge of the Litvak heritage — and to countering, to the best of its ability, the reemergent anti-Semitic trends in that part of the world. It is, of course, a challenging undertaking — but also a noble and vitally urgent one, we believe. Those interested in participating in it, helping to bring it to reality, are invited to contact me directly, at iosselm@gmail.com, for more details.
Mikhail Iossel
Associate Professor of English
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
http://clemensheni.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/the-prague-declaration-holocaust-obfuscation-and-antisemitism/
Oy vey… Some things were left unexplained for you, and I hope that the way you described things will not cause any tension between you and others.
1. Small factual mistake. You write:
>In order to sanitize their own involvement in the Holocaust, the Lithuanian government has embarked on a campaign to portray itself…
The truth is, there was no Lithuanian government. The president of independent Lithuania fled during the first Soviet takeover in 1940, after which Lithuania found itself in the hands of the Nazis. Actions of the Holocaust were performed by Nazi units as well as local units, which Nazis tried to create everywhere, and spontaneous local involvement. So you might say there’s ’social’ continuity, as many perpetrators remain unpunished, but there’s no government or state continuity whatsoever.
2. The staff at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute is independent of what you call ‘authorities’. They might have wanted to avoid certain sensitivities, but I highly doubt that they would conspire against Litvaks in their choice of professors. Which professors come, depends on availability, expected salary, etc etc. I don’t know much how it works, but it would be hard for me to imagine that the Yiddish Institute staff would participate in what you describe as conspiracy against ‘the truth’.
3. The Red-Brown movement is indeed a dangerous phenomenon and a lame comparison, but the purpose is not to downplay the importance of the Holocaust in Lithuanian history, as you claim, but rather to draw the world’s attention to the crimes of the Soviet regime, which went largely unnoticed since the USSR won the war. For this, people behind it are trying to use analogies with the regime universally condemned in Europe – Nazism. Just like the Palestinian independence activists use the analogy with Apartheid. This play with emotions is definitely not the best strategy, and I’m not denying that. What I want to draw your attention to is that, in my personal opinion, this blog entry is written in too conspirational terms.
There are many flaws and dangerous trends in the public discourse in Lithuania. Play with emotions instead of arguments – yes. Anti-Semitism – yes. But grand conspiracy involving the media, universities and the government? Come on…
Wishing you best luck in your studies,
Yiddish Summer’08 participant
“Just like the Palestinian independence activists use the analogy with Apartheid. This play with emotions is definitely not the best strategy, and I’m not denying that.”
Wow. Do you think it might not be the “best strategy,” but is a correct analogy? In fact this is well know anti-Zionist antisemitism to compare the Palestinaians and their situation with South Africa.
My entry you refer to is, by the way, not a blog, but a scholarly article, resulot of a lecture I gave in Czech Republic some weeks ago….
Where did you read anything about its ‘correctness’? If I say “people use it”, does it imply “I approve it”? I think analogies are dangerous in general, especially on this emotional level, and especially when utilized by the press in their search of scandals. But the truth is, people use them since ancient times to make their statements more powerful and more visible. Think about Plato: just as a doctor’s work is not for himself, but for the patients, similarly a statesman’s work is not for himself, but for the governed subjects. Correct analogy? I wouldn’t think so (medicine as service and representative govt are totally different things), but it helps him to explain the case.
As someone with an academic background in Anthropology, I already instinctively seek for deeper explanations as to why people do this, how, and why it is important for them. What I’m saying in relation to this blog entry is that sometimes critics are too eager to put their own words into the Other’s mouth instead of hearing what the Other has to say about this, in their own words and with their own explanations. And when the locals see themselves in what they perceive as a distorted mirror, hearing that words they never uttered are attributed to them, they get furious. This has happened several times already.
And sorry, I didn’t open nor read your link and wasn’t commenting on that. Next time
Daiva, you write: “The Red-Brown movement is indeed a dangerous phenomenon and a lame comparison, but the purpose is not to downplay the importance of the Holocaust in Lithuanian history, as you claim, but rather to draw the world’s attention to the crimes of the Soviet regime (…).” Having now studied this problem in death, I would respectfully disagree and ask our readers to respect that there are different opinions on the motivations of the Red-Brown movement led by Lithuania and the Baltics, and that for those of us who are professional researchers of antisemitism the links with some of the most noxious forms of contemporary antisemitism are all too obvious.
Let me now come to the point. First you say the red-equals-brown (you call it “Red-Brown”) movement is “a dangerous phenomenon”. In the same sentence, though, you go on in saying that the “purpose” is not to “downplay the importance of the Holocaust”. Logically thinking: why, then, is it a dangerous phenomenon for you? Obviously you do not see the real danger and motivation behind this. Lithuanian history is the starting point. Lithuanians have been very active in killing the Jews in the Holocaust, including the LAF which is treated in your country as a heroic anti-Soviet force. The most barbaric killings broke out in dozens of locations in the days following June 22 1941, even before the Germans took control over all of Lithuania. Furthermore, it would not have been possible for the Germans (or the Nazis, the SS, the Wehrmacht, the Polizeibataillone etc.) to kill 95% of Lithuanian Jews during the Shoah without the help of many thousands of enthusiastic Lithuanian volunteers from all works of life. Among the very few survivors were some Jews, fighting German killers. They were supported by the Red Army of the USSR, today, however, some former Jewish partisans are accused of “war crimes”, or of having been in the Communist Party etc. Lithuania of today (since the early 1990s) wants to get rid of its anti-Semitic history by producing new anti-Semitic tropes (Jew-Bolshevik alliance, a typical motif for German anti-Semitism as well). Furthermore Lithuanian activists, politicians and their friends in the Baltics, Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole, reactivated the theory of equality of all totalitarianism. This theory in its most known form was developed in the late 1940s, e.g. by famous German philosopher Hannah Arendt (former lover of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, by the way…..). Ignoring the specifics of anti-Semitism on the one hand and German eliminationist anti-Semitism in particular are important elements of that theory. Worse, equal totalitarianism goes on in equalizing all kind of bad regimes, especially of course Hitler and Stalin. They are not focusing on the pointlessness of the Shoah, the killing of Jews for no other aim than the killing itself. This was an unprecedented crime. The Soviets also killed people and established an extremely bad regime – but they did not kill people and an entire people because of the very existence of that people (like the Ukrainians, the Balts etc. NONE of these groups were targeted as such, but as representative of so called counter-revolutionaries, capitalists (kulaks) etc. etc. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer pointed this out: the Holocaust cannot be compared with other atrocities or crimes, because the Shoah was much worse than atrocities, crimes (state sponsored or not) or denying of human rights like free press etc.
The red equals brown or the Holocaust obfuscation movement, to cite terms developed by Prof. Dovid Katz at Vilnius University, is an essential part of Lithuanian and Baltic nationalism, and of Eastern European and Western European attempts to rewrite history. They know very well, why they compare incomparable things like Nazism and Stalinism. IF they can establish, as the anti-Semitic Prague Declaration is pleading for, a common European remembrance day, August 23 instead of January 27, the Auschwitz memorial day, the rewrite history. You have to be aware of this Daiva, and all other interested people as well. The Lithuanians and the Germans and their friends want to get rid of the fact that on January 27 the biggest cemetery on earth, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz itself, was liberated – by the RED Army of the USSR. Russia/the USSR had the biggest lost of human beings during World War II.
In my article (please see: http://clemensheni.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/clemens-heni-prague-declaration-antisemitism-holocaust.pdf) I focus of course on Soviet anti-Semitism, and historian Prof. Yitzhak Arad from Yad Vashem, or Dr. Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, dealt with Soviet anti-Semitism extensively
But this has absolutely nothing to do with the Prague Declaration and Lithuanian attempts to equalize National Socialism with Stalinism or the entire Soviet Union. The Prague Declaration and the various Lithuanian sponsored attempts to persuade the European Union of “equivalence of two genocides” are deeply antisemitic and rooted in the contemporary intellectual heirs of Holocaust Denial and of attempts to link Jews to Soviet crimes as a way of “justifying” the Holocaust. I recommend to readers Professor Dovid Katz’s website, http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com, where there is overwhelming documentation of the trajectory of the red-equals-brown movement in the last two years and of the concurrent campaign of antisemitism, racism and intolerance that has peaked in Lithuania in the frankly sickening campaign against the last surviving Holocaust survivors who are heroes of the free world for having fought Hitlerism as partisans in the forests of Lithuania. It is a disgrace for the European Union that Dr. Rachel Margolis of Rechovot is afraid to return to Vilnius, at the age of 88, because of the government’s and prosecutors’ campaigns of defamation.
One final thought on red-equals-brown: Just ask any Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia if the people who murdered their families are “equivalent” to the Red Army that liberated them! It is incredible how nonsense sponsored by a state can begin to take in even highly intelligent people who do not suspect something amiss when the state tries to run historical research.
As for state efforts to silence debate in Lithuania (nobody called it a “conspiracy,” certainly not Mr Josh Markovitz in his terrific article above!), I would refer you and our readers to the startling material collected by Professor Katz on his page “Free Debate under threat” (at: http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/157423.html).
Hillarious lies. I was at the program. The guy is paranoid. He has a history. The program was full of Holocaust related events…This is absurd.
Wow…Falsh. Once again somebody became a messanger to the world of the meshugene. Di bord easily brainswashes immature infantile kids.
To Mikhail,
Thanks for your kind words and for sending me the sending me the Globe and Mail article. It’s so wonderful to see your esteem for Professor Katz; his work will last the ages.
To Clemens,
I had the pleasure of seeing your outstanding article last month when Professor Katz was thoughtful enough to send me the link to it. Bravo and God bless you.
To Daiva,
1) Spare us your legal fictions and geopolitical technicalities. Lithuania is one hell of an old country.
2) About the Vilnius Summer Yiddish Program, I need only copy and paste your own words:
“I don’t know much how it works…”
Dovid Katz fact-checked my article. He founded the Program. He’s been there since the beginning. He’s there right now. He “knows much how it works”.
3) There’s no possible comparison between the USSR and Nazi Germany.
Stalin didn’t wipe Lithuania off the map. It’s still there; there are five-star hotels there for you to stay in and Prada and Armani outlets for you to shop in.
But “Lite” is no more. Its culture, its language, and most devastating of all, its people, are gone forever. The Nazis and their enthusiastic Lithuanian henchmen made sure of that.
Hilter succeeded in destroying Vilna. “Vilnius” is the EU Culture Capital for 2009.
And that, Daiva, is the difference. Best of luck to you, too.
To Ms. Connie,
My article wasn’t about you being at the Program. It was about the founder of the Program NOT being there.
And to my dear Mr. Ph.D.,
You almost had me there for a minute. You were trying to make it look like you were insulting me, but through the insertion of an additional [s] in “brainswashing”, you surreptitiously attributed to me the possession of not 1, but 2 brains. You sly thing.
For the record, I actually found the hor more compelling than the bord.
Evaulation of the country, situation at Vilnius University and the Summer Program in Yiddish – all statements are serious and based on one source of information – Prof. Dovid Katz. Is he the only one sourse? Have you interviewed others? The same Holocaust survivors living in Lithuania, students, the VYI staff… Write more about it.
Josh, I think you started your career in a wrong way. You allow yourself to use and abuse your own name by the manipulator who famous in all Yiddish field for misconducts of all sorts. Did you ask yourself or somebody else how come that this guy was not in any of the SP in Vilnius from 2001?
Thank you Josh! This is a perfect article about our stay and about what was happening in Vilnius this summer. You captured perfectly the emotions of me, a student at this program in summer 2009 too. I was there to meet Dovid Katz, I was there to meet this famous and, in my opinion, briliant scholar and he was nowhere to be found.
As something to add, its a pity that your school started early, because we students as a reaction to the nonaction of the Institut organised a trip to the partisan fort with Fania. An experience I would not want to miss. There this old, brave and admired woman (at least admired by me) said that we live a dangerous life because we spend time with a criminal. And it was not meant to be funny.
I thank you for this article. Its great.
Josh, what is the purpose of your article? To start a new debate on the subject that has been hotly debated for decades? Do you present any new evidence that has not seen light yet? Have you listened to all parties of this tragic story? Do you try to balance their opposing views and evidence? Is your article aimed at reconciliation? I wish you were more cautious to accept views of one man, no matter how esteemed, without ever questioning their reliability? Auditum altera pars.
As another student on the program with Josh this summer, and a fellow UCLA (graduate) student, I wanted to say thanks so much for posting this–I’ve been meaning to write something along these lines myself at some point, but haven’t gotten around to figuring out where/how. But I have definitely been talking about it to anyone who will listen since I got back.
To Marlene and Connie–well, first, I am curious to know what you’re referring to about Dovid Katz. My sources on this are basically the same as Josh’s, so if you have reason to believe that the story we heard from Dovid Katz is false, I’d be curious to hear why. But I don’t, at this point, have any reason to doubt his story. Indeed, I can point out that when I went to the “genocide museum” (a.k.a. KGB museum) in Vilnius on my own, before I knew about any of this, I was struck by the fact that it was in the style of a Holocaust museum, and even covered the time period before and after the Holocaust in which Lithuanian partisans were fighting against the Soviets, but said virtually nothing about the Holocaust. My response at that point was, OK, I’m sure living under the Soviets wasn’t pleasant, and I have sympathy for that…but for them to present it in this way, and completely ignore the true genocide suffered by the Jews of Lithuania, they can “cry me a river”.
But then, to find out later that the Lithuanian government has threatened to arrest Holocaust survivors for supposed crimes against Lithuanian civilians because they fought on the side of Soviet partisans during WWII (when it seems highly likely that any Lithuanian civilians who they killed were fighting on behalf of the Nazis, and given the fact that Jews who wanted to help in the struggle against the Nazis had no choice BUT to fight with the Soviets)… To find out that the authorities are also trying to push out Rokhl Kostanian, the courageous woman who runs the only Holocaust museum in Lithuania, in the interests of replacing her with someone who will be willing to cover up the extreme complicity of Lithuanians in the Holocaust… (For example, one thing that I assume the Lithuanian government is eager to cover up: A letter from a Nazi officer to his superiors, quoted in the museum, where he says that he wants to commend the Lithuanian people for truly understanding the nature of the Jewish question, and for their eagerness to help the Germans kill Jews, even without direct orders from German soldiers.) To find out that not only did the Lithuanians treat the Nazis as liberators when they took over from the Soviets in 1941 (after a year of Soviet occupation), but that they still today are kinder to the Nazis than to the Soviets in their telling of history… To find out that they’re also trying to get Dovid Katz to leave the country because he’s loudly speaking out about this… All of these things totally changed my opinions of what, on the surface, is a quite beautiful and charming country.
Daiva, as far as the complicity of the Yiddish Institute: I don’t know about the issue of not hiring Litvak professors, but I can tell you that the VYI seems to have been clearly complicit in suppressing discussion of this issue. As the best example, they cut out the trip to the partisan base this year, robbing us of the opportunity to hear Fania tell her story about when she was in the partisans. Luckily, as Jana mentioned above, we were able to arrange an unofficial trip on our own at the end of the program. Before that trip, I believed the official line that there wasn’t much to see there, it was just a forest, and it wasn’t worth driving out into the forest with a big bus. But after actually seeing what’s there, and hearing what Fania had to say about her experience as a partisan…well, really, the only conclusion I can possibly draw is that they weren’t taking us there because the Lithuanian government didn’t want them to, because there’s no way anybody can honestly say that it’s “just a forest”. (Here are a couple of pictures: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30849718&l=87f52bd65d&id=4100327 http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30849719&l=1ffb2091ec&id=4100327 And, I have a few more, with some backstory, on page 10 of my complete album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026698&id=4100327&l=2cab005248 ) Also, while I assume Daiva knows who Fania is, for others: Fania is an 87-year old former partisan, one of the partisans targeted by the Lithuanian government, who is on the staff as librarian of the Yiddish Institute…and also an amazing resource, as one of the last survivors from the prewar generation of Vilna Jews.
As for why the Yiddish Institute would be complicit in suppressing this issue–my understanding is that they receive funding and other support from the Lithuanian government, and to allow students to hear about any of this in officially-sanctioned events would threaten that support. (Most of us only learned about it because a courageous tour leader for one of our Jewish Vilna tours encouraged us to contact Dovid Katz directly.) So my impression, really just an educated guess, is that the leadership of the Institute is willing to accept that restriction, even if it weakens the program, because they’re afraid that otherwise there wouldn’t be a program at all. And really, I can sympathize that they’re in a difficult position, if that is in fact the case. But if that’s really the choice they face, it’s awful. Of course, one may wonder why the Lithuanian government would be supporting this sort of endeavor at all if they’re anti-Semites. But from what Dovid Katz told us, it’s a subtle game in which they support certain things that commemorate the Jewish culture that used to be there, and they’re eager to welcome foreigners from America, Israel, etc., for that purpose. But at the same time, this angers much of the Lithuanian populace, so more quietly, they do things like threatening to arrest 87 year old former Holocaust survivors for being perpetrators of genocide (even though they haven’t gone after any non-Jewish Soviet partisans, and they celebrate anti-Soviet Lithuanians who also happened to be known Nazi collaborators…), and they try to perpetuate the idea, THROUGHOUT ALL OF EUROPE (see the Prague declaration), that their own suffering under the Soviets was just as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews, which, as far as I know, is absolutely demonstrably false.
Finally, Vidas, as far as what Josh hopes to gain by this–I can’t say what his motives are, but since I’ve also been trying to spread this, I can answer for myself, at least… In large part, our motivation is to put international pressure on the Lithuanian government to change their behavior. This isn’t an issue that’s been debated for decades, this is something that’s happening today. They need to STOP threatening to arrest Fania and other Holocaust survivors. They need to STOP trying to equate their own suffering under the Soviets with what happened in the Jews during the Holocaust. (And, even more, we need to stop the effort of the Baltic states to get the history taught this way in all schools throughout Europe.) And finally, we want people from around the world (including Jews who have been fooled by the Lithuanians) to STOP believing that the modern Lithuanian state is sincerely interested in commemorating the Holocaust and recognizing their own complicity in it–because clearly, they are not.
Frankly, the Holocaust issues are very important when a member of the European Union wants to distory everything to get itself off the hook historically: by persecuting 88 year old survivors, and by pushing the “Prague Declaration” that would replace the Holocaust with two equal genocides. I am grateful that there are still a few people in Lithuania with the enormous courage to simply disagree, and it’s hardly surprising that they are being made into target by the the antisemitic government’s lackeys. In the case of the summer program, I have been concerned at the increasing mixing in by the government. I have been pressured into staying in a dormitory of the Lithuanian army and having to listen every morning to militaristic music that reminds me of what was played as the country’s Jews were being gleefully butchered. I was concerned this past summer that a high foreign ministry official was chosen as the guest speaker at the opening (instead of a Yiddish scholar or interesting Holocaust survivor). Most of all, I am concerned that a Yiddish institution is taken over entirely by Lithuanians who do not speak, read or write Yiddish, and for whom it is tragically becoming part of an industry to manipulate Jewish visitors and students who are naive and don’t ask one simple question: Why don’t these Lithuanians, earning the Big Bucks from their “Love of Yiddish” come out publicly in a democracy and disagree with the Prague Declaratgion, with the persecution of survivors, including their own librarian, and put their opinions on this and the disgusting antisemitic campaign in the country in writing on the web? My own feeling was that ANYONE who stoof up for Jewish causes and disagreed with the government of Lithuania that is investing a fortune in “changing the history” and trivializing the Holocaust is made into some kind of paraiah with a swat team ready to pen poison comments. This is not what Yiddish studies is all about.
PS: I urge everyone interested in this to study the materials on: http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com to see what is going on there!! Although I don’t agree with everything there it provides the sources for the backgo to this discussion which is very timely and important, so thanks to Josh for his historically important piece and his courage.
To Josh and Judith:
“There’s no possible comparison between the USSR and Nazi Germany.
Stalin didn’t wipe Lithuania off the map.”
But killed and deported to Gulag and Siberia 250k to 400k of her people. Communism also killed more 10 million of Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars etc, deported entire nations of Chechnia, Ingushetia, Crimean Tartars.
Where in Prague Declaration do you see a sign of equality between Nazism and Bolshevism, Holocaust and genocide of Ukrainians, Chechens, Lithuanians etc? The declaration does NOT equate one to another: http://praguedeclaration.org/
It only brings to your atterntion that there was another bloody totalitaritarian regime largely ignored by the Western World due to purely political considerations. This declaration states that “there are substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism in terms of their horrific and appalling character and their crimes against humanity.” Nobody can deny that violant totalitarian regimes have many similarities. This does not mean they are equal. The declaration also states that “millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism.” Does recognition of other totalitarian crimes and sympathy to their victics somehow dilutes or reduces the our recognition of Nazi crimes?
Read this declaration as a human being not as a Jew or Lithuanian or whoever. This a long overdue document of humanity.
Thanks, Saul for steering this away from the nasty personal attacks on the tiny number of Jewish scholars who actually work in Lithuania and have had the courage to stand up, and toward the issues. What is wrong with the Prague Declaration has been discussed by many, from British members of parliament, to the last organization in the world of surviving Litvaks to the head of the International Task Force on the Holocaust to scholars, and human rights specialists speaking at OSCE etc. Please see one list at:
http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/182423/17122.html
Agree or disagree, you will see that that are very serious concerns that this Prague Declaration is rooted in Holocaust revisionism, antisemitism and racism.
And more on the Declaration itself at:
http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/182423/index.html
I would just add that when such declarations come from governments that are investing heavily in the persecution of the last Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, that preside over a veritable zoo of antisemitism in their own countries, and finance “genocide” museums that talk about all except the one genocide that occurred in the country, there is a problem, dear Saul. The problem goes bigger when we see that this Declaration comes from the Eastern European nations that have the worst Holocaust record, one they are trying to cover up with such declarations about the universal equivalence and humanity of suffering and all the rest.
There is also a related problem that can’t really be ignored now: What tolerance will democratic Lithuania and her institutions (including academia and the “Judaic” studies scene such as it is) now show to the handful of Jewish scholars who disagree with you? Do they have a right to their opinion or does someone who disagrees with the Prague Declaration have to become a victim of the kind of bile and hate we have seen from some commentators above…. ? ? ?
Another quote from Prague Declaration clearly stating that Nazism and Communism must be “judged by their own terrible merits”
“call for:
reaching an all-European understanding that both the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes each to be judged by their own terrible merits to be destructive in their policies of systematically applying extreme forms of terror, suppressing all civic and human liberties, starting aggressive wars and, as an inseparable part of their ideologies, exterminating and deporting whole nations and groups of population; and that as such they should be considered to be the main disasters, which blighted the 20th century”
(OK, let’s try this again:)
As another student on the program with Josh this summer, and a fellow UCLA (graduate) student, I wanted to say thanks so much for posting this–I’ve been meaning to write something along these lines myself at some point, but haven’t gotten around to figuring out where/how. But I have definitely been talking about it to anyone who will listen since I got back.
To Marlene and Connie–well, first, I am curious to know what you’re referring to about Dovid Katz. My sources on this are basically the same as Josh’s, so if you have reason to believe that the story we heard from Dovid Katz is false, I’d be curious to hear why. But I don’t, at this point, have any reason to doubt his story. Indeed, I can point out that when I went to the “genocide museum” (a.k.a. KGB museum) in Vilnius on my own, before I knew about any of this, I was struck by the fact that it was in the style of a Holocaust museum, and even covered the time period before and after the Holocaust in which Lithuanian partisans were fighting against the Soviets, but said virtually nothing about the Holocaust. My response at that point was, OK, I’m sure living under the Soviets wasn’t pleasant, and I have sympathy for that…but for them to present it in this way, and completely ignore the true genocide suffered by the Jews of Lithuania, they can “cry me a river”.
But then, to find out later that the Lithuanian government has threatened to arrest Holocaust survivors for supposed crimes against Lithuanian civilians because they fought on the side of Soviet partisans during WWII (when it seems highly likely that any Lithuanian civilians who they killed were fighting on behalf of the Nazis, and given the fact that Jews who wanted to help in the struggle against the Nazis had no choice BUT to fight with the Soviets)… To find out that the authorities are also trying to push out Rokhl Kostanian, the courageous woman who runs the only Holocaust museum in Lithuania, in the interests of replacing her with someone who will be willing to cover up the extreme complicity of Lithuanians in the Holocaust… (For example, one thing that I assume the Lithuanian government is eager to cover up: A letter from a Nazi officer to his superiors, quoted in the museum, where he says that he wants to commend the Lithuanian people for truly understanding the nature of the Jewish question, and for their eagerness to help the Germans kill Jews, even without direct orders from German soldiers.) To find out that not only did the Lithuanians treat the Nazis as liberators when they took over from the Soviets in 1941 (after a year of Soviet occupation), but that they still today are kinder to the Nazis than to the Soviets in their telling of history… To find out that they’re also trying to get Dovid Katz to leave the country because he’s loudly speaking out about this… All of these things totally changed my opinions of what, on the surface, is a quite beautiful and charming country.
(Continued…)
Daiva, as far as the complicity of the Yiddish Institute: I don’t know about the issue of not hiring Litvak professors, but I can tell you that the VYI seems to have been clearly complicit in suppressing discussion of this issue. As the best example, they cut out the trip to the partisan base this year, robbing us of the opportunity to hear Fania tell her story about when she was in the partisans. Luckily, as Jana mentioned above, we were able to arrange an unofficial trip on our own at the end of the program. Before that trip, I believed the official line that there wasn’t much to see there, it was just a forest, and it wasn’t worth driving out into the forest with a big bus. But after actually seeing what’s there, and hearing what Fania had to say about her experience as a partisan…well, really, the only conclusion I can possibly draw is that they weren’t taking us there because the Lithuanian government didn’t want them to, because there’s no way anybody can honestly say that it’s “just a forest”. (Here are a couple of pictures: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30849718&l=87f52bd65d&id=4100327 http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30849719&l=1ffb2091ec&id=4100327 And, I have a few more, with some backstory, on page 10 of my complete album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026698&id=4100327&l=2cab005248 ) Also, while I assume Daiva knows who Fania is, for others: Fania is an 87-year old former partisan, one of the partisans targeted by the Lithuanian government, who is on the staff as librarian of the Yiddish Institute…and also an amazing resource, as one of the last survivors from the prewar generation of Vilna Jews
(Continued…)
Daiva, as far as the complicity of the Yiddish Institute: I don’t know about the issue of not hiring Litvak professors, but I can tell you that the VYI seems to have been clearly complicit in suppressing discussion of this issue. As the best example, they cut out the trip to the partisan base this year, robbing us of the opportunity to hear Fania tell her story about when she was in the partisans. Luckily, as Jana mentioned above, we were able to arrange an unofficial trip on our own at the end of the program. Before that trip, I believed the official line that there wasn’t much to see there, it was just a forest, and it wasn’t worth driving out into the forest with a big bus. But after actually seeing what’s there, and hearing what Fania had to say about her experience as a partisan…well, really, the only conclusion I can possibly draw is that they weren’t taking us there because the Lithuanian government didn’t want them to, because there’s no way anybody can honestly say that it’s “just a forest”. (I had some pictures linked here, but those links seem to be causing my comment not to post, unfortunately. ) Also, while I assume Daiva knows who Fania is, for others: Fania is an 87-year old former partisan, one of the partisans targeted by the Lithuanian government, who is on the staff as librarian of the Yiddish Institute…and also an amazing resource, as one of the last survivors from the prewar generation of Vilna Jews.
As for why the Yiddish Institute would be complicit in suppressing this issue–my understanding is that they receive funding and other support from the Lithuanian government, and to allow students to hear about any of this in officially-sanctioned events would threaten that support. (Most of us only learned about it because a courageous tour leader for one of our Jewish Vilna tours encouraged us to contact Dovid Katz directly.) So my impression, really just an educated guess, is that the leadership of the Institute is willing to accept that restriction, even if it weakens the program, because they’re afraid that otherwise there wouldn’t be a program at all. And really, I can sympathize that they’re in a difficult position, if that is in fact the case. But if that’s really the choice they face, it’s awful. Of course, one may wonder why the Lithuanian government would be supporting this sort of endeavor at all if they’re anti-Semites. But from what Dovid Katz told us, it’s a subtle game in which they support certain things that commemorate the Jewish culture that used to be there, and they’re eager to welcome foreigners from America, Israel, etc., for that purpose. But at the same time, this angers much of the Lithuanian populace, so more quietly, they do things like threatening to arrest 87 year old former Holocaust survivors for being perpetrators of genocide (even though they haven’t gone after any non-Jewish Soviet partisans, and they celebrate anti-Soviet Lithuanians who also happened to be known Nazi collaborators…), and they try to perpetuate the idea, THROUGHOUT ALL OF EUROPE (see the Prague declaration), that their own suffering under the Soviets was just as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews, which, as far as I know, is absolutely demonstrably false.
Finally, Vidas, as far as what Josh hopes to gain by this–I can’t say what his motives are, but since I’ve also been trying to spread this, I can answer for myself, at least… In large part, our motivation is to put international pressure on the Lithuanian government to change their behavior. This isn’t an issue that’s been debated for decades, this is something that’s happening today. They need to STOP threatening to arrest Fania and other Holocaust survivors. They need to STOP trying to equate their own suffering under the Soviets with what happened in the Jews during the Holocaust. (And, even more, we need to stop the effort of the Baltic states to get the history taught this way in all schools throughout Europe.) And finally, we want people from around the world (including Jews who have been fooled by the Lithuanians) to STOP believing that the modern Lithuanian state is sincerely interested in commemorating the Holocaust and recognizing their own complicity in it–because clearly, they are not.
Dear Judith,
it is no wonder that the Prague Declaration has been initiated by Easter European countries. They feel that they have to take all the blame for Holocaust and nobody would ever listen to their tragic historic compains. Do you think it is enought to listen to one side? You will never get anywhere if you do so because you will feel all informed and not willing to listen to bullshit coming from “Nazi collaborators.” Let’s stop boiling emotions and turn to reason. And reason tells throughout the history that history can not be written by one side and guilt is not decided just by procecutor. Is there a anti-semitism in Lithuania? Yes. It is also in France (even more), UK, Germany, USA and (yes) Israel. Will cornering a nation for her skunks who participated in Jew slaughter help us to move on? The result will be and is opposite. I want to remind that at least two Lithuanian presidents after reclaiming their independence, Brazauskas and Landsbergis, on behalf of the Lithuanian Parliament appologized to Jewish people for the attrocities that their citizens committed. Brazauskas did it in Kneset. Is that enough. No. However, there is a lot of unjustice done in the world by so many great nations. It takes time to atone. Only time will heal the wounds.
Michael,
since when did a letter to a Nazi officer to his supperiors served as an evidence of truth? And was it an authentic document or a document cooked in the kitchen of KGB who used “Lithuanian compicity” in Holocaust to exterminate inteligencia. On Lithuanian blogs many anti-semitic views are verifiably spread by modern KGB from Russia. We all have freedom of speach, a natural rather than constitutionaly grated freedom, and we have a responsibility coming with it. (Moses said that true freedom comes with law.) Even if you think that this blog is only a student affair you forget that you may deeply insult Lithuanian students who have nothing to do with Holocaust.
I am Lithuanian. Neither I nor my reliatives collaborated with Nazis. But as Lithuanian I have a moral sense of guilt to what happened to Lithuanian Jews in 1941. Just as I am proud of Lithuanian basketball team, althought I am not part of it, I am ashamed of few Lithuanians who participated in Jewish massacre, althought I am not part of them. I am not alone in my position in Lithuania. I beg, please don’t paint Lithuania as a anti-semitic state. This all blame game will not sustain as a one way street. Action causes reaction. When will we stop?
You are a star, dear Vidas! NOBODY blames the Lithuanian people. Today we are disturbed by the government’s campaign against Holocaust survivors, and the commissions that try to make “equal” Soviet and Nazi crimes and invest in all sorts of trickery. If you look at Prof. Katz’s website, you’ll find he has already posted two dozen works by brave Lithuanian citizens who want to tell the truth, support reconciliation and move onward. Please see the page
“Bold Lithuanian Citizens Speak” at http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/132423.html
Dear Vidas: People who support free debate in Lithuania, and the same variety of opinion as in any democratic state, are your friends, they are the friends of Lithuania. We should be angry at the same people, those abusing your tax money to distort the Holocaust for the political advantage of corrupt politicians and their spineless wannabe academic lackeys who have constructed a disturbing “dead Jew industry” that is worthy of investigation…
Judith, thank you for your good words and valuable links. I just finished reading a speech by Vytautas Toleikis at the 3rd Congress of Litvaks.
I want to share my personal view on the history of separation between Lithuanian and Jewish populations of Lithuania. I am not a historian but I am a big fan of history. Russia annexed Lithuania and Poland in the end of 18th century. This caused periodic uprisings against Russian occupation, most notable in 1794, 1830, 1863, and 1905. In retaliation Russia banned Lithuanian press and spoken language from all public offices, schools, and churches. Ukrainian and Byelorussian were banned as well but not Polish, Yiddish, and German. From the instinct of self-preservation the Lithuanian mentality started to shift from imperial (as Grand Duchy of Lithuania was in middle ages) to ethnic: underground Lithuanian schools were opened, Lithuanian books were printed in Konigsberg and smuggled to Lithuania. My grandfather was one of those book-smugglers and eventually ended up in prison. It was a powerful National Revival (Sajudis) and the beginning of mental separation between ethnic Lithuanians and other nations of former Grand Duchy. Two distinct schools of though evolved around the idea of future Lithuanian independence. Social democrats were thinking about restoration of Lithuania in its imperial boundaries, while nationalists dreamed about Lithuania within ethnic boundaries. In 1918 a short-lived socialist republic of Lithuania-Belorussia (Litbel) was established. After its failure, independent Lithuania was re-established within its ethnic boundaries. There is a curious similarity between Jewish and Lithuanian efforts of self-preservation: they re-established their countries on ethnic or religious principles. This, in my opinion, finished the mental separation between Lithuanians and Litvaks. The separation only deepened by Vilnius occupation and annexation by Poland between 1922 and 1939. Majority of Litvaks lived only very short time in independent Lithuania. Lithuanians are rightfully blamed that they did not mentally accept Litvaks as part of their nation. In turn Lithuanians blamed Litvaks that they never accepted independent Lithuania as their only country and embracing Soviet occupation. It is counterproductive to search for the guilty one who started this cycle of separation. (I intentionally leave Holocaust aside, there is no justification for those who contributed to it. I want to talk only about normal people.) We need to move on: Lithuanians should wholeheartedly accept Litvaks as their own, with its rich cultural legacy, and Litvaks should accept Lithuania as their country and try to make things better from within. All other aspects, such as slowness of prosecution of war criminals, restitution of Jewish property etc. are derivatives of this separation.
Josh, you write a very sycophantic piece about a famous Professor, without having sources other than the Professor himself. Are you presenting this article as an objective piece?
Michael is Dovid Katz….Don’t make a laughable stock out of yourself and of the kid.
To Clemens Heni, Ph.D.:
“The Soviets also killed people and established an extremely bad regime but they did not kill people and an entire people because of the very existence of that people (like the Ukrainians, the Balts etc. ) NONE of these groups were targeted as such, but as representative of so called counter-revolutionaries, capitalists (kulaks) etc. ”
Killing is still killing, on national origin or class origin. Stalin exterminated 10 to 20 million of people. Every one of them counts regardless of class or nationality. And BTW, it would be impossible without eager participation of thousands of so called activists.
OK, to all of you who are just dismissing us as sycophants of Dovid Katz (Grant, Marlene, etc.): Do you have any evidence that what we’ve learned from him is inaccurate? I’ll admit that I learned most of what I know about this directly from Dovid Katz. I’ll even admit that I can see people not liking the guy, even though I very much enjoyed getting to meet him this summer. But as far as I know, what we’ve learned from him is true, and is something the world needs to know about, and I haven’t seen anybody here provide compelling evidence to the contrary… (By the way, Marlene–to be a scholar as famous as Dovid Katz…I wish. But note that the pictures I posted earlier are linked to my Facebook profile, and I’ve also posted my UCLA E-mail address on here. So yes, I am in fact a real person…and not the one making a “laughable stock” out of anybody…)
To Saul:
“Killing is still killing.”
True. But there is a reason as to why more than one word exists to describe and specify this ever-horrendouns act of depriving someone of life by forcible means. Words matter. When mis-applied, they end up cheapening and subverting the very concepts they were called upon to serve.
Please see below a salient, remarkably smart article on the subject, by the noted Lithuanian philosopher:
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/07/the-inflation-of-genocide/65613.aspx
Another, more functional link to the cited article:
http://www.operationlastchance.org/LITHUANIA_32-21.htm.
Third attempt, with apologies:
http://www.operationlastchance.org/LITHUANIA_32-21.htm
Mikhail, thanks so much for this link to Donskis. He says: “After all, we cannot regard the history of all our civilisations as one ongoing crime and one endless genocide of some group or other. Whitewashing a concept benefits no one.
Whether we like it or not, the Holocaust was the one and only bona fide genocide in human history.”
This is true. We are facing an upbhill battle, my Yale experience told me that most Americans (especially liberals) call a lot of evils on eart “genocide,” without proof and without at least thinking about a philosophical argumentation (!) of Donskis or Prof. Yehuda Bauer, which I quoted in my piece (link in my previous post).
To Clemens: Calling everything bad “genocide” might be, as you think, a “liberal” habit in the US (though I ‘m not sure it’s so simple), but after a number of visits to Eastern Europe, I can tell you that it’s a far-right anti-Semitic policy in Eastern Europe, where the reason is simple: to cover up complicity in the Holocaust instead of coming clean like the Germans and others did. In other words, by calling all crimes “genocide” you diminish the Holocaust and the reason why there are almost no Jews left. Then when you start “investigating” survivors who were partisans (that’s why they are alive) you muddy it all up even more. That’s my impression, anyway. For right-wing antisemites, the “All killing is the same and it’s all genocide” is the chic new way to get rid of the “inconvenience” of the Holocaust.
To Josh and Michael: For Vilnius summer school students who enjoyed previous summers there, the difference is really enormous since government-pleasing hacks tried to turn it into Lithuanian gov PR, and as Josh correctly felt, really threw out the warm Litvak spirit I came for. The biggest loss in recent years was the failure to bring back the incredible director of the cultural program from 2008, Elliot (Elya) Palevsky. I never met anyone so at home in both Vilna Yiddish and American culture, perfect for the program. The son of two Vilna Jewish partisans who heroically fought the Nazis. He’s like a link between the real Vilna of the past and what can be taught and presented of it for today, with authentic Vilna Yiddishkeit. I even heard that he was invited and then dis-invited for 09, all because like other Litvaks, he expressed his opinion and even got summer course students and teachers to sign a letter to the president. Obviously the political hacks in control, who told us that Fania’s partisan fort is “just a forest, nothing to see” didn’t want that happening again. But they didn’t count on you guys from UCLA speaking up loud and clear. I feel sorry for the bright young Lithuanian students who are not encouraged to speak up with their opinions in a democracy even when it’s against the government’s “Jew policies”. By the way, the letter Elliot organized in 08 is online on the Holocaust in the Baltics site, at:
http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/VilniusSummerProgram19Aug2008.pdf
Daiva says Lithuania had no government in 1941 and there is no way there is a conspiracy between Lithuanian academia, media and government today.
Never mind she missed the point which was about the CURRENT government, not the government in 1941.
As a Lithuanian academic, Daiva should know that there was a Lithuanian government in June of 1941 that drafted letters of praise to Adolf Hitler and established concentration camps even before the Nazis took control and disbanded that government. As a Lithuanian, she should know that the father of Vytautas Landsbergis, the man credited with regaining Lithuanian independence in 1990/1991, was a member of that government who signed decrees to deprive Jews of their assets, and that he only objected to the massacres in Kaunas taking place in public in daylight.
I have worked in a number of Lithuanian media outlets, I have attended Vilnius University and I have worked for the Lithuanian parliament. I can say there is a conspiracy to deny and obfuscate the Holocaust in Lithuania. I can cite numerous examples of this. The example of Daiva herself denying her own history is the best one that comes to mind at the moment. Admittedly, she probably doesn’t know, or does not want to know, that it was Lithuanians, not Germans, who brutally murdered Jews during the first days of the German invasion, and she doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to know, that it was Lithuanians who shot Jews, completely voluntarily, under German command at Paneriai. She probably also doesn’t want to hear that the father of former “Christian Democrat” MP Bobelis was the man who set up anbd presided over the mass executions in Kaunas 1941-1944, and she certainly doesn’t want to know that former president Valdas Adamkus “fought” under Nazi command in 1944.
I have never attended the Yiddish courses of VYI as anything other than an auditor and don’t know the politics involved. I do know Professor Katz personally and consider him a friend. He is not “paranoid” except to the extent he is correct about government surveillance in Lithuania. This is and was one of the main tasks of Lithuanian State Security, to patrol for potential ethnic strife, and as in WWII, they have a very exotic notion of how to go about that assignment. I do know the International Commission for Assessing Crimes of the Nazi and Communist Regimes is total crap. Yitzhak Arad thought he could work within that framework, but it turned out to be what it looked like initially, a sucker’s game, set up, incidentally, by the unrehabilitated Nazi veteran president.
Why is it that no one spoke up for Fania Brancovskaja and Rachel Margolis? Why is it no one ever looked into the Nazi past of Valdas Adamkus? Make up your own mind.
To Grant: I don’t understand what you mean by Josh having gotten it all from some single famous professor (and that you may not like some professor that he does like is really not interesting for anyone). The evidence for the case is laid out it many dozens of original primary-source documents on the website
http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com
with pages dedicated to The Prague Declaration, Antisemitism, the campaign against Holocaust survivors and the nucleus of a future atlas of the Holocaust itself on the pages dedicated to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. I was personally most shocked by the evidence on the page that deals with the incredible attempts to restrain freedom of speech and debate. Please look at it!
There may of course be better websites on the topic, but this one has data from numerous and diverse sources and also has the latest news about what happened to Fania less than two weeks ago, when she was called a mass murder suspect by the country’s leading internet news site, and nobody in Lithuania seems to have answered or taken note, except a certain professor on this certain website, who also warmly credits on his home page a certain Daiva now in Tel Aviv for her rapid robust response on her own site! This is not a story about Jews against Lithuanians. It is about a handful of brave Jews AND Lithuanians, one of them my predecessor above this comment, Geoff Vasil, who wrote a terrific article last year about the horrendous abuse of power that prevents 88 year old Rachel Margolis from returning to Lithuania (link is on the Holocaust in the Baltics site). All I want to say right now is Thank You Josh for opening the gates to this very important tale that some were trying to keep under the rug.
Judith, I am in no way contesting the veracity of the statements about institutionalized Anti Semitism in Lithuania, nor the oppression of Fania and others. It is egregious, endemic and pervasive. It needs to be fought at every level.
The article is written as “cloak & dagger”, about meeting discreetly, and whispering, etc. There are factual errors – Fania is on staff, she is a Litvak. Josh calls himself a Litvak, but he doesn’t recognize the lecturers from Argentina etc as Litvaks. Where is the disconnect?
Josh says Prof. Katz was forbidden to speak or lecture with the students of his own Summer Program – by whom? At which program? Since what date? Is Josh saying here that the government approves the lecturers at the VYI? He says the government doesn’t trust Lithuanian Jews to teach on the faculty, but are there any Lithuanian Jews that do teach Yiddish in Lithuania? My reading of his comments are that no non Jewish lecturer at VYI could be credible, can that statement receive some clarification please?
Then the meeting with Prof Katz is “clandestine” but after such a clandestine meeting they went out for coffee. Publicly? Clandestinely? Did Josh verify the need for secret meetings with any of the Jewish leadership within Lithuania, or are they suspect as well?
It’s very exciting to be embroiled in international conspiracies and intrigues, for a 24 year old student, especially so. Governmentally endorsed Anti Semitism is a very serious concern, when addressing these issues I believe they should be addressed factually, accurately and very deliberately, so I ask again, is he presenting this article as an objective piece or is this a puff piece about his “hero” and intrigues presented but not verified. To combat anti Semitism, one should do so on a factual serious basis, not with conspiracy theories and “clandestine” meetings. Josh says that Prof Katz is his “hero”; is this “hero” worship a common thread amongst internationally respected Yiddish academics and institutions? If so, how fortunate for Josh to study with such a great man, but when addressing very serious issues such as the Prague Declaration and villainization of the partisans, one would hope that the author verified sources and facts prior to publication.
Judith, Josh writes an article giving voice to unverified comments by the good Professor. As proof, he offers articles on that Professor’s website (such as his own) that have been well scrutinized and placed there by the Professor. Josh indicates a causal relationship between the Professor speaking out on behalf of the Partisans and then being forbidden from speaking with the students of “his own summer program”. Where is that evidence?
Daiva and others talk about the Palestinian efforts to analogize their issues with Apartheid and the resulting discounting of Apartheid by a fallacious comparison, so too should we be aware that the charge of Anti Semitism is a large charge indeed, and should be taken with all seriousness, rather than emotional appeals. When one charges conspiracies, one should be able to offer substantiation. I personally agree that the Prague Declaration is such an attempt, I personally believe Lithuania is an anti Semitic State, and that the vast majority of the charges here are true, however I am not a practicing academic that publishes and is trying to create a career in the field, nor am I a public figure in Jewish politics; I am a consumer of media and look for accuracy in reporting.
There is a common thread running through many of the responses:
“It’s so wonderful to see your esteem for Professor Katz; his work will last the ages.”
“when Professor Katz was thoughtful enough”
“Dovid Katz fact-checked my article. He founded the Program. He’s been there since the beginning. He’s there right now. He “knows much how it works”.
“I was there to meet Dovid Katz, I was there to meet this famous and, in my opinion, brilliant scholar”
Adulation can sometimes negate an academic’s need for validation, when charging something like anti Semitism, we should be careful not to discount the seriousness of such charges by levying charges inappropriately, therefore I believe that publishing places a great obligation on the author to ensure accuracy.
Michael says: ” To find out that they’re also trying to get Dovid Katz to leave the country because he’s loudly speaking out about this…”
Michael, how did you find this out? Are you solely dependent upon the Professor telling you they are trying to throw him out of the country, or did anyone else confirm this data? What has the state done to expell him?
Michael then goes on to say: ” but I can tell you that the VYI seems to have been clearly complicit in suppressing discussion of this issue.”; are you sure it wasn’t based upon any other factors? Would a woman like Fania continue to associate herself with VYI if she believed they were suppressing the truth? You go on to say: “As for why the Yiddish Institute would be complicit in suppressing this issue–my understanding is that they receive funding and other support from the Lithuanian government, and to allow students to hear about any of this in officially-sanctioned events would threaten that support. (Most of us only learned about it because a courageous tour leader for one of our Jewish Vilna tours encouraged us to contact Dovid Katz directly.)”, again, it is your understanding based upon the words of one man, seemingly the fount of endless information that appears unverified anywhere here. It seems to an outside observer that the man who apparently created the VYI is doing his utmost to speak ill of it and undermine the institution.
Michael says: ” And finally, we want people from around the world (including Jews who have been fooled by the Lithuanians)”, but what if Jews are not only being fooled by Lithuanians, but are being manipulated by their own? What if? Has anyone asked?
Later Michael says: I’ll admit that I learned most of what I know about this directly from Dovid Katz, and then: to be a scholar as famous as Dovid Katz…I wish.
Judith then echo’s other’s sentiments calling those that might disagree with this Professor “lackeys” and impugning the staff at the VYI. Judith, have you undertaken any individual research on this, or are you repeating the words spoken to you by somebody else? I’m not asking what you “believe to be true”, I am asking what independent research you’ve done before accusing others of “manipulating Jewish visitors and students”. Judith refers to the “nasty personal attacks on the tiny number of Jewish scholars who actually work in Lithuania”, but apparently has no issue in launching attacks on non Jewish scholars in that field. Absolutism is not a good strategy here. To have credibility in opposing anti Semitism, we need accuracy as well.
Anti Semitism is too large and serious an issue to be treated as a football for private agenda’s. Mesmerizing speakers, no matter who they are or what credibility they convey should never be accepted as the sole voice of authority on such immense issues of such importance. This article and much of the material after that is based upon the remarks of one man, few here seem to question if this man might have an agenda of his own.
I quote Vidas: “I wish you were more cautious to accept views of one man, no matter how esteemed, without ever questioning their reliability?”
Hopefully we can introduce more objectivity into this conversation rather than adulation and blind faith.
Looks like Grant is the man with the bitter personal grudge here. Do you have any personal involvement or history that you are masking? Josh wrote a memoir of his summer and provided the website, http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com where a large number of documents are provided on these issues. It seems to me that anyone who studies the site will see that there are very serious problems (whether or not you agree with anybody’s view), with the government-sponsored accusations against Holocaust survivors, the clampdown on free speech, the anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist campaigns, the Prague Declararation, the Red-Brown Commissions and so forth. But instead of commenting on any of the issues, pretending they don’t exist or that they were “invented” by one professor you are out to get, you just go for bile. A shame. Among the many documents on the website is a letter from three US congressmen who thought the problem important enough to comment on: http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/3USCONGRESSMEN1AUG2008.pdf
Josh has done a huge service by bringing his memoir of his summer and a web of very serious issues to wider attention in the United States. We are in his debt, completely apart from who may like or dislike whomever. That Josh found out about these issues from one professor or ten has no bearing on whether these are are actually serious issues. Please try to see the distinction. In any case, the important issues here are headed for major exposure, rendering moot all the interpersonal animus that some correspondents here seem unable to avoid.
Good luck to all!
It seems that my comment got lost somewhere. Very briefly:
1. Geoff, it seems you claim to have a brain-scanning machine. Unfortunately, it got a short-circuit and spat out wrong information, or you confused me with somebody else. I’m sorry to say, but your ‘translation’ of what you believe to be my thoughts is ridiculous.
2. I believe it’s a good illustration how some people like to put their own words into the Other’s mouth instead of asking what the Other really feels/thinks/has done about it. Was it difficult to approach the VYI staff and POLITELY ask them without implicit accusations?
3. People who are trying to initiate more balanced debate in Lithuania are caught in cross-fire, and you are contributing to this by your implications that they ‘must know’, ‘must feel’, ‘must be intending to hide’ something AS LITHUANIANS. One side thinks they’re not doing enough, while another side shouts that these people confront the national ideals and so on. The fact is, that these people know one thing too well: if you want to go beyond ‘preaching for the converted’, you have to be politically sensitive to reach wider audiences. Accusations provoke defensive behavior (let me remind you that I only speak about the SOCIETY, the govt is a different thing. Btw, it’s another govt now than the one during whose mandate the charges against the partisans were started and then lifted).
4. My view of the ‘conspiracy’. You can put pressure on politicians, and they will succumb. They need many benefits from the US, like the visa-free regime that was recently granted. They will also be glad to relieve themselves of the duty to explain it to their constituencies. And some media, as you can see from the Holocaust in the Baltics website, will rub their hands with joy in announcing that ‘political move X was made/cancelled due to pressure from American Jewish lobbies’… Educating the society is something I find more important than pressuring the government, hence the doubts.
Folks,
I urge everyone to avoid personal attacks, deliberate misinterpretations, and rude statements. It is not conductive for discussion. I find these examples offensive:
Connie: “Hillarious lies. I was at the program. The guy is paranoid. He has a history. The program was full of Holocaust related events…This is absurd.”
Craig: “Wow…Falsh. Once again somebody became a messanger to the world of the meshugene. Di bord easily brainswashes immature infantile kids.”
Josh: “To Daiva,
1) Spare us your legal fictions and geopolitical technicalities. Lithuania is one hell of an old country.”
Marlene: ”Michael is Dovid Katz….Don’t make a laughable stock out of yourself and of the kid.”
Geoff: ”The example of Daiva herself denying her own history is the best one that comes to mind at the moment. Admittedly, she probably doesn’t know, or does not want to know, that it was Lithuanians, not Germans, who brutally murdered Jews during the first days of the German invasion, and she doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to know, that it was Lithuanians who shot Jews, completely voluntarily, under German command at Paneriai. She probably also doesn’t want to hear that the father of former “Christian Democrat” MP Bobelis was the man who set up anbd presided over the mass executions in Kaunas 1941-1944, and she certainly doesn’t want to know that former president Valdas Adamkus “fought” under Nazi command in 1944.”
And using old name Vilna and intentionally avoiding Lithuanian name Vilnius sends wrong message that Litvaks don’t associate themselfves with Lithuania.
Whoa Judith, what history am I masking? Nowhere and never did I say the issues do not exist, I know factually that they do exist and affirmed so on more than one occasion.
You say I have a “bitter personal grudge” and I’m “out to get” the Professor, accuse me of animus; somewhat hyperbolic my dear? I’ve never met the Professor! I’m looking for accuracy in a very serious subject and it’s reporting, thus my question of objectivity.
There were statements made about the VYI, non Jewish staff there, whispers, intrigues and clandestine meetings – all of that appears to be single sourced without external verification. Instead of launching a personal attack at me, obfuscating, or attempting to re-direct the conversation, why not respond to the questions I raised? Why not question what Connie, Marlene, Five Star Hotel in Lithuania, and others are asking about? Afraid?
In reading many of the comments, it appears to me that the Professor is doing his utmost to undermine the credibility of the VYI, why? What is his agenda? To the best of my knowledge it is a wonderful institution, with outstanding academics on staff, providing a great service, and somehow some students seem to be talking about whispered conversations, clandestine meetings and intrigues. Maybe not all is quite as it appears to be.
Is Judith Dovid Katz?
No dear Grant, you forgot that Michael is Dovid Katz as “proven” by someone from “Oxbridge”. All part of the poison pen campaign obviously being orchestrated. Time to ask who Saul is, who Cindy is and who Melissa is. I am proud to have studied with Prof. Katz and the OTHER wonderful teachers at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, so we are in complete agreement about the need to save this wonderful institution. After years of returning there and following the news, I can’t help wondering if you are the Grant who resigned from the institute’s board after failing to organize Holocaust distortion events manipulated by the Nazi-Soviet Commission that was supposed to provide your star speaker in California (and apoloogies if not). I actually think Lithuania is a great country and it’s people are terrific. The poison at the Yiddish institute is the one person nobody has mentioned (the real manipulators sure know how to pull the strings and sink everyone else’s name into it, and work to avoid anyone talking about the issues). It’s the institute’s director! The Lithuanian nationalist director, who decides everything at the whim of “higher local politics” is the Sharunas Liekis, who neither knows nor cares about Yiddish but is one of the country’s main “Jew manipulators” and has as much business being director of a Yiddish Institute as…. (I’ll leave the analogy to your fertile pen). He even had the anti-Semitic Genocide Center publish a book of his without shame. What the Yiddish institute needs is a director who cares first and foremost about Yiddish and its final native speakers here, the survivors; in other words the purpose for which the institute exists. And yes, it needs a director who will support all his or her staff, and their right to opinions different from that being “legislated” by the state’s Holocaust Denial spinmeisters, who dream of ensnaring good folks like yourself. Think again about who is the manipulator, who is being manipulated, and how to ensure that the Yiddish institute remains dedicated to Yiddish and to Jewish causes and especially Holocaust survivors now when they are under sickening attack, not one that is dedicated to sham Lithuanian nationalist politics and distortion. A Yiddish institute that “has to permanently have” a Lithuanian nationalist director keeping Soviet style “purity of thought” (resulting in the problems that some students encountered and bravely reported, causing you so much anger) needs to be fixed! As you say, not all is as it appears to be. If various students reported a problem, there might just be a problem, and looking at it calmly is the way forward. You have been badly manipulated, and it happens to a lot of naive westerners on their encounters when they go to this part of the world. Time to wake up, and concentrate on the Holocaust survivors being accused of war crimes as part of the Prague Declaration movement to put Soviet and Nazi crimes into “total equality of history” to cover for certain countries’ role in the Holocaust.
Josh Markovitz, a participant in the Vilnius Yiddish Institute’s 2009 Summer Program in Yiddish, has written an article published by the Bruin Standard that expresses his admiration for Dovid Katz. Unfortunately this article also contains an outright falsehood the implication of which is that Dr. Katz opinions have been censored by a conspiracy of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University and the Lithuanian government.
Mr. Markovitz writes that Professor Katz was “forbidden to lecture or even speak with the students of his own Summer Program” because of his public statements regarding the Public Prosecutor’s questioning in March 2008 of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute’s Librarian, who is a heroic Holocaust survivor and veteran of a Soviet Partisan unit. This is an absolute and gratuitous lie. No one associated with the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University or, for that matter, the Lithuanian government “forbade” Dr. Katz, either directly or by implication, to lecture at the Summer Program or communicate with Summer Program students. Further, no one today, inside or outside Lithuania, “forbids” him say what he will to anyone about anything.
Removing this falsehood from Mr. Markovitz’ article deflates its overwrought tone of conspiracy, which serves no purpose other than to truly obfuscate the complex realities of the Holocaust and concurrent anti-Nazi struggle in Lithuania.
Yes, text of Michael and Judith, is written by the same person-Dovid Katz. The same way as Josh Markovitz’s letter seems to be edited by Dovid Katz. Simple analysis of text helps to establish it. Sorry, it once again proves that the guy is nisht ganz in kop.
Some more information about the famous Professor:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=105419§ioncode=26
This is so terribly tragic. A brilliant, brilliant mind that is so vitally needed for academic research and preservation of our history gets wasted on conspiracy theories and crackpot nonsense. Prof. Katz has made an amazing contribution to the needs of Holocaust survivors, exposing anti Semitism and being an incredible academic, but he seems to conjure up fantasies of conspiracies, accuses people that are actually on the same side as him of fantastic plots and destroys his own credibility repeatedly. His enemy list seems randomized, with little rational basis for declaring who might be the enemy de jour. He alienates and offends good decent people by accusations, name calling and discredits the very necessary task of rooting out anti Semites by randomizing his accusations which he spews without basis. To my mind, calling someone an anti Semite is a very big accusation that should not be made lightly, just as in USA calling someone a racist is a big accusation that should not be made lightly. By random, repeated accusations, he demeans the significance of the term, and displays to a non Jewish world that mere contact can expose them to such vitriol. This does not help the Jewish cause.
Serious academics should conduct themselves in a serious manner if they are to be accorded credibility and respect. It’s sad that such a great mind can be used to manipulate 24 year old students and others into buying into “clandestine” meetings and other such conspiracies. We have so few young people interested in Yiddish and the history of our community, we need to value and respect them, rather than manipulate them into meshugas.
I would willingly believe that there were anti Semitic agenda’s at play in Lithuania, but unfortunately I cannot ascribe any credibility to such conspiracies when raised by somebody that so regularly sees them, and under every shrub. Every paranoid in the world can be right once, but after discrediting themselves so often, the one time they are correct would not be taken seriously. How unfortunate. How unfortunate too that he would try to drag in kids at the start of their career’s. This whole thing is a complete tragedy.
Greetings from Vilnius! I don’t normally participate in such forums because they allow the most untoward personal attacks, both signed and anonymous, without any editorial control over accuracy or fairness. Nevertheless, I am rather shocked at some of the outlandish claims by supporters and detractors alike, and believe there are very serious issues that need to be brought into the public domain. I am delighted to answer questions on the issues, as long as a person’s full and true name is provided and there are no personal attacks on anyone.
My opinions on these matters have been expressed in four published articles this year, all of which are linked on the home page of http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com (two under “Recent comment” and two further down under May 2009). Moreover I take full responsibility for the contents of the site, and am always grateful for criticism and advice. The final page (site information) includes a thank-you list to those who have helped, and especially those who have pointed out areas that need to be improved.
As for the problems that arose at last August’s summer program, I have included a paragraph, for which I take full resonponsibility, on the website (the entry for August 2009 on the “Freedom of Debate” page). I believe there were some unfortunate pressures, but the idea of a “conspiracy” never even occurred to me, so it is curious to see some correspondents, for whatever motive, ascribing to me opinions that are not mine. I conclude the published paragraph, on the website, with a sincere hope for next year’s summer program. I am proud to have been intensively involved with this program for twenty-eight years, first at Oxford, and then here in Vilnius. I don’t have more to say on that at this point.
On a related issue, I am at work on a piece on the moral responsibilities of the field of Judaic studies in these lands of the Holocaust, especially in times of heightened antisemitism, Holocaust Obfuscation, and assaults on free speech that are all alas very real and have been commented upon rather widely, by a highly diverse group of observers. In this connection, I am very happy to have included the page Bold Citizens Speak Out, dedicated to the courageous Lithuanian citizens of diverse backgrounds who have expressed themselves with great courage over many years. Moreover, I take pride in some nineteen years of efforts to help Lithuanian students become proficient in various areas of Yiddish and Judaic studies. These began in late 1990, in close partnership with the late and lamented Professor Meir Shub (1924-2009), who played a crucial role in the project, starting with the first Oxford-Vilnius agreement several months later, reported in the New York Times in April of 1991 (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/06/arts/lithuania-and-oxford-are-linked-by-yiddish.html).
A personal word of thanks to dear Vidas (wherever you are) for your valiant attempt to introduce civility where others have lost theirs. So, I hope it’s okay if I express an alternative opinion on one point mentioned, regarding the use of such forms as Vilna, Vilno, Wilna, Wilno; and of course, Yiddish Vilne. It is the sign of a great city that it is home to a diverse and multicultural heritage, where different forms of even the city’s name are cherished by different minorities. In the case of the all but annihilated Yiddish component (one that was always in principle stateless, and never aspiring to political power of any kind), such usages are particularly to be encouraged. It is splendid that this point is forcefully made in a recent book by a young Lithuanian scholar: Laimonas Briedis’s “City of Strangers” which I highly recommend.
My own public courses and lectures this month are listed on the “Events” page of http://www.dovidkatz.com and everybody is welcome to visit any of these.
Every good wish
Dovid Katz
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