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Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania (3)

I dare to hope that our debate
can build bridges to a better
understanding

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

The last paragraph in your article of 8 November is a good place to begin my response. I concur that our differences of opinion as well as our areas of agreement should be viewed as an exchange of honest, healthy dialogue. I would even dare to hope that it can begin to build bridges to a better understanding of all the issues we wander into.

For a moment let’s forget about the Lithuanian economy during medieval times. It’s really hard to relate to. Let’s move forward to the more modern economy of the inter-war years. Yes, on the eve of World War 1 Lithuania was economically backward. But that had nothing to do with your claim that the Jews did not contribute to the economy. Like the rest of Eastern Europe at the time, economic development was lagging in Lithuania. Modern economic strides began in Western Europe much earlier than it did in Eastern Europe.

You speak of the Jews having had a monopoly as merchants, traders, shopkeepers and craftsmen. There was no such thing as a monopoly in these small and scattered operations. These were mostly mom-and-pop businesses run out of front rooms in their homes. Of course, like everyone else, they tried to get the best prices they could, but to speak of anti-trust laws and anti-price-fixing laws is totally out of context for that environment.

Another point of importance is that Jews had little choice but to make their living as merchants and traders. Traditionally they were excluded from other occupations and professions. For example, my father had studied engineering in St. Petersburg only to discover when he returned to Lithuania that it was impossible for a Jew to find employment as an engineer. Instead, he became a bank manager in the Jewish Peoples’ Bank.

I still think you are underestimating the contributions of the Jews to the Lithuanian economy, so let me quote from an article which appeared in the Lithuania Tribune of 12/23/10 during the visit of Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius to Israel:
“Prime Minister Kubilius has agreed that the Lithuanian history is unimaginable without the Lithuanian Jewish community that has left a deep imprint on our history and our lives. Since the times of Vytautas the Great, it has always been an integral part of the Lithuanian society, closely involved in the development of science, economy and culture.”

One major difference of opinion in our discussions concerns the definition of “genocide.” The term “genocide” was first applied in 1944 in regard to the attempted extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany. It clearly refers to the systematic killing or extermination of a whole people. Obviously, and unfortunately, there have been other genocides, but the Soviet regime did not liquidate the majority of Lithuanians. That the Soviets committed terrible crimes against the Lithuanians is a given, that the nation lost political leaders, army officers, clergymen and others is undisputed. But the Lithuanian population was very far from being exterminated.

To say that there were other genocides does not diminish the Holocaust, but to equate the Holocaust with events that were not genocides is to diminish the Holocaust. Comparing incomparables, equating unequals is a distortion of history.

I’m sure that Professor Dovid Katz can easily defend himself, so I won’t venture into that area. From reading his articles in the various media and on his website www.defendinghistory.com  I have to assert that he is courageously outspoken and is probably feared and shunned by many in the Lithuanian government. But if they would only listen to him, I believe it would help them accomplish what they say they are sincerely trying to do: to improve their damaged relationship with their small Lithuanian-Jewish community and, consequently, with world Jewry.

Professor Katz analyzes politics and politicians from a vantage point that few other scholars have reached. He should be valued in Lithuania, not feared, if the government wants to deal with its Jewish problems in a realistic way to create a better tomorrow for themselves and their people.

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

To say that there were other genocides does not diminish the Holocaust

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,
 
Apparently, we agree that Jews and Lithuanians both suffered greatly during World War II.   And we both agree that Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an excellent book.   But, there are still a few things that we don’t agree on.   And I hope that we can disagree without necessarily imputing bad motives to each other.
 
I do not dispute Dov Levin’s claim that Jews were an integral part of Lithuania’s economy.   But the Jewish lending of money to the Polish kings and other nobles that you brought up, which enabled them to continue their extravagant lifestyles at the people’s expense, had both a short-term and a long-term negative impact on the country and the lives of Lithuanians. Yes, the Jews were also mainly merchants, traders, shopkeepers and craftsmen. But to evaluate their contribution to the country’s economy in those fields is a little hard, because Jews had a monopoly in Lithuania in those fields, and it is acknowledged that all monopolies, with their price-fixing, stifling of competition, and other evils, generally have a negative impact on a country’s economy. That’s why in the US we have anti-trust laws, anti-price-fixing laws, etc. Lithuanians did not have any of those protections.
 
One result was that, after 600 years of Lithuanians and Jews living side by side, on the eve of World War I, Lithuania was an economically depressed and backward country.  If I had to voice an opinion on whether the Jewish contribution to the country’s economy was positive or negative, I would say that at best it was a wash.   I.e., the Jews kept their part of the machinery of the economy – such as it was - running during that time, but there were no noticeable gains or improvements, especially if one compares to the adjacent countries to the immediate West. But I am willing to simply say that Lithuanians and Jews lived peacefully side by side, but separate, for 600 years, that they interacted almost exclusively only in the marketplace, and leave it at that.
 
You say there was only one genocide, and to say something different is to distort the history of World War II.   Yet, for someone to state that the Holocaust was the most terrible genocide in European history, but that there were other genocides as well, does not at all distort or diminish the significance of the Holocaust. Historian Norman M. Naimark, in his book Stalin’s Genocides, is not the only historian and social scientist who agrees that the generally accepted definition of genocide is wider than the narrow UN definition of the crime of genocide.
 
But let’s go back to the limited 1948 UN definition which states that the crime of genocide under the UN charter consists of acts which are committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Moscow’s intent, in which it succeeded, with respect to Lithuania, was to decapitate the nation.   In the executions and mass deportations to the gulag of 1941, 1944-45, 1948-49, and 1951, the country lost perhaps 90% of its political leaders, army officers, clergymen, administrators, teachers, and other professionals.  That was the Soviet intent, to destroy the leadership of Lithuania, so that they could easier eradicate Lithuania’s culture and history from the remaining population.   As Molotov, or one of his henchmen, said “There will be a Lithuania, there just won’t be any Lithuanians.”
 
As I said, I hope that we can disagree on some things without imputing bad motives. For example, Dovid Katz’s article in the November 2, 2011, Jerusalem Post, does nothing other than perpetuate further disagreements and enmity between Lithuanians and Jews. It is exactly the kind of gratuitous demonization of Lithuanians that Yves Plasseraud deplored in his article which started this whole discussion of ours.
 
Lithuania voted against full Palestinian membership in UNESCO, i.e., voted in support of Israel’s position, so Dovid Katz states that that vote is merely an example of Lithuania’s “duplicity”, and uses that as an opportunity to trot out his full arsenal of attacks against Lithuania.  If, of course, Lithuania had voted the other way, against Israel’s position, Katz would then have said that the vote showed Lithuania’s “antisemitism”, and then written the same article against Lithuania.   We can never win, can we?  I expect the next time that Katz reads about the price of fish in Lithuania, he will say “What duplicity, the Lithuanians are talking about fish just to divert attention from the suffering of Jews”, and will again write the same article.
 
As in all societies, there have been good people and bad people on both sides, but I believe that the majority of Jews and of Lithuanians have always been good people.   And though, Lithuanians and Jews lived side by side but separately, there were times when significant numbers of each consciously helped one another for the common good.   One of those times was at the beginning of the Lithuanian Republic in 1918-1925, when Lithuanian Jews helped Lithuania attain independence, and Jews received a large amount of autonomy within the country.    But that’s another story (see, e.g., Šarūnas Liekis, A State within a State?).
 
We both agree that Jews and Lithuanians suffered greatly during World War II. We both agree that the Holocaust was the most terrible genocide in European history.   So, I hope that even though we disagree about some of the terminology, i.e., the term genocide, or some of the other sub-issues, that we can view our disagreements as simply differences of opinion.

Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania

I love and respect Lithuanians no less than I do my American friends, both Jews and non-Jews

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

Thank you for your gracious opening paragraph to our discussion. I will try to comment on the points you raise in your letter.

I do not dispute Dina Porat’s finding that 99.5% of the Lithuanian population was neither directly nor indirectly involved in the killing of Jews. I would not dispute the findings of any reputable researcher/historian. But what I wish to point out is that one-half of 1% of the 1941 Lithuanian population equaled about 15,000 persons. Looking at the Jewish population of about 200,000 at the time, the ratio between killers and victims was 1: 13.
That can account for high efficiency. The real problem was that the other 99.5% of the population chose to close their eyes.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." This quote from Edmund Burke is the painful truth in the story of the Holocaust as well as other major tragedies. But to ask in hindsight why good men did nothing means not to comprehend the climate and the terror of the times.

No one is blaming innocent Lithuanians. I think the anger and the constant memory stem from the distortion of the history of what really took place. If only the true history were presented by teachers and texts, if only the Lithuanian people accepted the truth, I think the healing process would begin and an honest reconciliation would follow. Again I am not claiming that all Lithuanians do not accept the truth. There are certainly many notable exceptions.

Regarding the contributions of the Jews to the economy of Lithuania, if you choose not to believe Professor Dov Levin’s claims that Jews were an integral part of the economy, then let’s take a common-sense approach to the subject. The Jews were mainly merchants, traders, shopkeepers, craftsmen. They stimulated the economy with their businesses and provided a marketplace for farmers and others who needed to sell their produce and wares. Lithuania was one country and one economy. All of the participants in that economy made contributions, whether they were Jews, Lithuanians or other ethnic groups. They lived side by side, and even though the various groups carried on their individual traditions, there were still all part of one whole.

Contrary to what you are implying about my reaction to Bloodlands, I think it is an excellent book and everyone should read it. I went to Timothy Snyder’s presentation at George Washington University shortly after the book came off the press. It was extremely interesting and impressive to hear him speak and answer the myriad questions from the audience. I bought the book right there and later read it. Why would I have quoted from the book if I believed it is not a valuable work?

As for the Kazys Skirpa radio broadcasts reported in Bloodlands, if you say that this reference proved to be incorrect and has been deleted from subsequent printings of the book, I take your word for it. But that in itself doesn’t change the fact that there were bloody pogroms in Lithuania even before the Germans had arrived. This has been reported countless times in survivor testimonies and historical accounts. It ushered in the Holocaust in Lithuania. Another fact that has been reported for 70 years by survivors, witnesses and historical accounts is that the Germans received all the help they needed from Lithuanian locals who were eager accomplices.

I find it very sad when you say, “I still don’t know why the Lithuanians can’t simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve  theirs.” All people should grieve over tragedies that involve the loss and suffering of others and should mourn the victims, regardless of their nationality or race. It seems cold and indifferent to separate out who should be mourned by whom.

During my three lengthy trips to Lithuania, I have made deep and lasting friendships with a good number of Lithuanians. I love and respect them no less than I do my American friends, both Jews and non-Jews. I cannot imagine that my Lithuanian friends could ever live in a different compartment of my heart.

In your final sentence you write, “The Lithuanians and the Jews both suffered greatly during World War II – or do you disagree with this as well?”

How could I possibly disagree with the truth? You can even go further and say the Lithuanians suffered beyond World War II during the second Soviet occupation that lasted almost fifty years. But there is one major difference: the goal of the Nazi regime was total annihilation of European Jewry – genocide. They came close to succeeding in Lithuania. The Soviet regime imposed deportations, imprisonment, death and suffering on the Lithuanian nation, but the majority of the Lithuanian population survived. While many perished in Siberian gulags, larger numbers eventually returned home to Lithuania. Both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes were heinous, but there was only one genocide. That fact should be acknowledged so that the history of World War II will not become distorted.

Olga Zabludoff

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

Why can’t the Lithuanians simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve theirs?

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga:

Of the numbers of Lithuanian Jews that were killed in 1941-1944 I have seen several numbers, all of which were around 90% or more.   If you feel more comfortable with 95-96%, I won’t quarrel with you.   The fact is that any such number is an enormous number, and it was and is a great tragedy.   If there was anything that I could do to undo it, I would.   

But you don’t seem to dispute the Israeli historian Dina Porat that 99.5% of the Lithuanian population was neither directly nor indirectly involved.

As for your claim that the Jews contributed “enormously” to Lithuania’s economy and culture, you quote that wealthy Jews lent money to the “Lithuanian authorities” when they got into financial trouble.   But that was in centuries past, and those Lithuanian authorities were either individual warlords, or the Polish kings of the joint commonwealth, who got into personal financial trouble due to their extravagant lifestyles.   And all those Jewish loans then went into their own private pockets.  And, of course, the Jewish lenders did not act solely out of a sense of charity; they received more than a quid pro quo. The Lithuanian nation, i.e., the people of Lithuania, however, did not benefit at all from letting those same “Lithuanian authorities” continue living their extravagant lifestyles, at, ultimately, the people’s expense.    That's why those Jewish "contributions" to the Lithuanian nation's economy were, as I said, either ziltch, or perhaps less than ziltch.

And what about the “enormous” Jewish contributions to Lithuanian culture that you mentioned.   I am waiting to be enlightened on what it is you think they were.

Regarding your criticism of my “interpretation” of Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”, all that I said was that it is a very good book, and everyone should read it.   So, are you saying that it is not a very good book, and people should not read it?  

As for your quote from “Bloodlands” (pp. 191-192) regarding Kazys Skirpa and his so-called radio broadcasts urging bloodshed, I understand that the author has acknowledged that that is incorrect, that he was relying on someone else’s research, who was either mistaken or simply falsified it.   The author has advised that in subsequent printings of the book, that reference has been deleted.   If you like, check with him yourself. 

I still don't  know why the Lithuanians can't simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve theirs.  I did not start this dialogue, but was merely replying to Didier  Bertin and yourself.   As I said, before, the Lithuanians and the Jews both suffered greatly during World War II - or do you disagree with this as well?

Mr. Januta twists facts and figures
to suit his arguments

Olga Zabludoff

By: Olga Zabludoff
Washington, DC, USA

Mr. Januta’s article goes right to the heart of the problem: the tendency of critics like him to accuse others of being misinformed and of misstating facts. Indeed it is Mr. Januta who twists facts and figures to suit his arguments. Even when his facts are “correct,” they are simply half-truths.

For example: Yes, there is a Holocaust Museum in Vilnius, but to compare the pitiful little hidden building (the Green House) with the state-of-the-art Museum of Genocide located on a major street is like comparing a mouse to an elephant.

It hardly pays to argue with Januta because his reasoning is obviously skewed and his facts distorted. For example: 95-96% of the Lithuanian-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust in Lithuania. His figure is 90%.

In his book Professor Dov Levin speaks of two evils -- but of only one genocide, another confusion in Mr. Januta’s mind. Furthermore, his ridiculous claim that the Jews of Lithuania contributed “zilch” to the economy and culture of the country is contradicted by Dov Levin in his book: “The majority of the Jewish population worked at every possible trade, serving not only their own community but also the population at large.” (Introduction, p. 11)  Even going back to the Middle Ages, Dov Levin writes: “On more than one occasion, when the Lithuanian authorities got into financial (or other) difficulty, the country’s wealthiest Jews came to their aid with generous loans or grants of credit.” (p. 44) “The Jews’ deep penetration into the Lithuanian economy also created extra employment for the general population.” (p. 50)

Januta’s interpretation of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an injustice to the author’s careful research and articulate writing. Here is an excerpt that Mr. Januta obviously missed:

“The Germans arrived in Lithuania with their hand-picked nationalist Lithuanians and encountered local people who were willing to believe, or to act as if they believed, that Jews were responsible for Soviet repression. The Soviet deportations had taken place that very month, and the NKVD had shot Lithuanians in prison just a few days before the Germans arrived. The Lithuanian diplomat Kazys Skirpa, who returned with the Germans, used this suffering in his radio broadcasts to spur mobs to murder. Some 2,500 Jews were killed by Lithuanians in bloody pogroms in early July.

“As a result of trained collaboration and local assistance, German killers had all the help they needed in Lithuania.”  (pp. 191-192)

No need to say any more. fdfdg says it all in his Comments.

By Donatas Januta

Mr. Didier Bertin is either woefully misinformed or intentionally misstates facts in his “reply” to Yves Plasseraud’s article “Lithuania and the memory of the Shoah (Holocaust)”.   

He refers to the crimes of Hitler and Stalin as the “Double Genocide” theory, states that the comparison of the two is initiated by Lithuania and/or its government, and that the reason for it is to somehow minimize the tragedy which the world’s Jews suffered during the Second World War.   But the comparison between the tragedies brought by those two psychopaths, Hitler and Stalin, is not of Lithuanian origin or usage at all.  

Mr. Bertin chooses not to give credit where credit is due.  The comparison between Hitler’s and Stalin’s crimes was first made and thoroughly analyzed by the prominent Israeli historian Dov Levin, in his book “The Lesser of Two Evils”.   Three things are clear to anyone who has read Dov Levin’s treatise:   (1)  Levin was definitely and scrupulously comparing the two, as he inevitably had to do to arrive at his conclusion which of the two was the lesser evil.   (2)   He was evaluating the two evils solely from the Jewish perspective, and in his conclusion he uses the word “lesser” not in the universal sense, but only with respect to the effect upon Jews.    (3)   Because Levin, even in the title of his book acknowledges, that there was not one but two evils – if there was only one, there would have been nothing he could have compared it to –  that still leaves two for analyzing their effect on the rest of the world.  

Levin did not use a modifier to describe  the effect of the two evils on non-Jews i.e., he did not state whether as to non-Jews the two evils of Hitler and Stalin were or were not equal, or similar, or equivalent.   But neither does Lithuania.   I have not run across the Lithuanian government or Lithuanians using the term  “Double Genocide”. 

Lithuania’s position is simply – you grieve for your tragedy, and we will grieve for ours.  Just as every person, every family, so every nation, every ethnic group, is entitled to grieve for their own separately from the grief of others, so are the Jews, the Ukrainians, the Cambodians, the Armenians, and others.  So are the Lithuanians.  

Bertin further states that Lithuanians are not entitled to use the word “genocide” at all in reference to their own tragedy  because “Lithuanian people still exist and are active in Lithuania”, i.e., that Hitler’s, and Stalin’s,  attempts to wipe them out were not successful.  Yet, he refers to the killings of Armenians, Rwandans, and Cambodians as being “real genocides”.  But  Armenians in Armenia, Rwandan’s in Rwanda, and Cambodians in Cambodia also still exist and are active in their countries, are they not?   (Bertin conveniently forgot to mention the genocide of the Ukranians, which, of course was perpetrated by that “lesser” of the two evils.)

Yes, 90% of Lithuanian Jews were killed during World War II.   And, yes, there were some German-organized Lithuanian militias or “Lithuanian auxiliaries” who participated in some of those actions.   But how many Lithuanians were in those “Lithuanian auxiliaries”?    The Soviets during that period also had a Division, the 16th Rifle Division, which they referred to as the “Lithuanian 16th Rifle Division.”    But because most soldiers in this “Lithuanian” division did not speak Lithuanian, the commands were given not in Lithuanian, but in Yiddish and Russian.  So, just how “Lithuanian” was this 16th Soviet Division were commands were given not in Lithuanian but in Yiddish and Russian?    And how “Lithuanian” were those “Lithuanain auxiliaries” which partook in German-organized and German-led killing of Jews?

Here is a quote from testimony of an ethnic Pole,  a member of one of those “Lithuanian Auxiliaries”, also referred to as “Special Detachments”, which testimony is in the possession of the US Justice Department’s “nazi hunting” department, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI):  

The Pole, Jan Borkowski, testified how the Russian Dolgow recruited him into the German organized “Lithuanian Auiliary”:    „Dolgow and I entered the building through Wilenska Street and went to the second floor... In my presence [someone] personally filled out my name in the questionnaire in Lithuanian and I signed it after Jan Dolgow had translated it to me. My name in the questionnaire was written in Lithuanian as Jonas Barkauskas, son of Ignas. The questionnaire also included my date of birth, rank in the Polish army, and similar information. That day I also received a certificate stating tha I was employed in the Special Detachment and that I had a right to possess a firearm... I received an identification card, filled in Lithuanian.”  (Protocol of Interrogation of a Suspect – Jan Borkowski, 29 January 1973, U.U. v. Dailide, Document 580–655, Bates No. 07821–07823.”

Borkowski further admitted that he participated in executing Jews at Ponary, that he has no remorse in having participated, but he expressed regret for having worn a Lithuanian uniform while doing so:  „I was ashamed, however, that I was a Pole and had to put on the uniform of the bourgeois Lithuanian army.” (Bates No.07882).

And should the fact that Lithuania was one of the few, and perhaps the only, German occupied country where the Germans, despite repeatedly trying, did not succeed in establishing a local ethnic SS, should that not give pause for thought as well?

Just a bit more of statistics.   According to Israeli historian, Dina Porat, about 0.5%, i.e., half of one percent, of the entire population of Lithuania was involved directly and indirectly, i.e., whether prison guards, drivers, etc., in the killing of Jews. (And how many of your French, Mr. Bertin, were involved in rounding up France’s Jews and shoving them into railroad cars heading straight for Auschwitz?) Porat does not however state how many of that 0.5% were Jan Borkowski, Jan Dogow, and similar “honorary” Lithuanians.    The number of Lithuanians who have been identified as having, at the risk of their own lives, saved Jews from the Holocaust, is on the same order of magnitude.

Bertin’s statement that Lithuania is the sole country that “tries to prosecute Holocaust Survivors and members of the resistance against Nazis” flatly contradicts the facts. In 2007, the Polish government  forwarded information and asked the Lithuanian government to investigate the slaughter, on January 29, 1944, by Soviet partizans/bandits of Polish and Lithuanian civilian villagers at Kaniukai (“Koniuchy”).  Those partizans/bandits were not just anti-Nazis, their main goal was to bring Stalin’s communism, with its demonstrated terror, back into Lithuania.

Here is testimony of two of those “anti-Nazi” Soviet Jewish partisans regarding their actions at Kaniukai.  Abraham Zelesnikow:  “Partisans came around the village, everything was torched, every animal, every person was killed.  And one of my friends, acquaintances, a partisan, took a woman, put her head on a stone, and killed her with a stone.”    Zalman Wylozni:  “the entire village of 80 farmsteads was burned to the ground and its inhabitants were murdered.”

The villagers were slaughtered because they defended their and their families’ lives and livelihoods, as the partizan/bandits have themselves admitted:  Joseph Harmatz:  “We came in like bandits and, after all, we were robbing the local peasants of their livelihood.  .   .   .   Gradually the villagers ...  became our enemies.”  Rakhil Margolis:   “I could not stomach going to [these “requisitioning”  expeditions].  I was so ashamed of entering a cottage and demanding from the peasants potatoes, flour, especially livestock – sheep, cows.  The women cried, the men cursed.  .  .  .   there were many “underworlds” types in our detachment – former thieves and swindlers for whom robbery was an habitual thing.”

So, on the basis of Poland’s request and this type of information, the Lithuanian government sought to question, not to prosecute, but merely to question as witnesses,  some of the admitted witnesses in that indiscriminate slaughter of civilian villagers.   The result was an almost hysterical reaction from Efraim Zuroff and his followers, claiming that Lithuania was persecuting Holocaust survivors.

If someone wants to learn historical facts, and not just listen to political polemics based on red herrings like the so-called “Double Genocide” theory,  you should read professor Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” about the conditions in Lithuania and Easterm Europe during World War II.   Or better yet, start with Israeli historian Dov Levin’s “The Lesser of Two Evils.”

At the end of his article, Bertin, reminds us that many Russian soldiers died fighting the Nazis, as if Lithuanians should be thankful to the Russians.   But if Russia’s Stalin had not signed the infamous non-aggression treaty with Hitler in 1939, where Stalin gave Hitler free hand to invade and occupy Poland, and to thus start World War II, those Russians would also not have needed to die.   And the tragedy of the Holocaust might not have occurred either.  So, go ahead, Mr. Bertin, do thank the Russians.

There are other incorrect and misleading claims in Didier Bertin’s, as well as in Olga Zabludoff’s, “reply” to Yves Plasseraud.  Like the simple fact that in addition to the Genocide Museum of the Lithuanian tragedy, there is also nearby in Vilnius a Jewish Holocaust Museum, which is funded by the Lithuanian government and administered by the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and which covers exclusively the Jewish tragedy of World War II.  

And, please, Olga, spare us your crocodile tears under your fancied claim that the “contributions” of Jews “to Lithuania’s economy and culture were enormous” and that the Lithuanian government is ignoring it.  The contribution of Jews to Lithuania’s economy and culture, over the 600 years that they lived in Lithuania, was either zilch or less than zilch.   Let me explain.

Lithuania, on the eve of World War I, was as backward a country as the rest of the Russian Empire.  Due to the Czarist Russian empire’s occupation and oppressive colonialism policies for over 100 years, Lithuania’s economy was depressed, it was an agricultural economy, but with Lithuanians being barely more than subsistance farmers.   Its culture was marked by almost total illiteracy, due to Russia’s restrictions on the use of the Lithuanian language.  I have no idea what Olga Zabludoff has in mind when she refers to the “enormous” economic and cultural contributions of the Litvaks to the Lithuanian nation.  There were none.  Lithuania was economically and culturally exploited and oppressed.     

For 600 years Litvaks lived side by side with, but separate from, Lithuanians.   Indeed, Jewish historians have noted that of all of Europe’s Jews, those of Lithuania interacted the least with the ethnic people among whom they lived.   And they have further noted, that this self-insulation allowed the Jews to maintain, preserve and develop their unique culture with the least amount of outside influence.  A number of Jewish scholars note that the Jews in Lithuania were able to do this, because they considered the Lithuanians inferior to them.  

Zabludoff also laments that Lithuanians are striving to preserve and extol their own history without simultaneously extolling the history of its Jews.  And how much time do Jews devote to preserving or extoling Lithuania’s history when they extol their own?    If the small country of Lithuania doesn’t beat its own drum, there is noone else who will do it for them.   

Litvaks, are certainly neither unknown, nor ignored, nor hidden from the world, nor do they lack anyone to beat their drums.  Litvaks’ vast contribution to world knowledge, science and the arts over the last 100 years probably has no parallel in any other group.  And we have all benefited from their talents and intellect.    But this has happened in the last 100 years in the West.  It was not the case in Lithuania for the 600 years up to World War II.  Lithuanians were peasant farmers, Jews were urban merchants and tradesmen.   Their cultures did not intermix. 

And certainly it should not be surprising if the small country of Lithuania, as Zabludoff says, cannot appease far-right extremists, if such a prominent scholar like professor Timothy Snyder is unable to do so.  Just look at the attacks by Efraim Zuroff and his followers on Snyder’s book “Bloodlands”, which otherwise has received an extremely favorable reception throughout the world.

The Jews of Lithuania and the ethnic Lithuanians both suffered terribly during World War II.  But, just as they had lived for 600 years, side by side but separate, so they suffered their tragedies separately.  Thus, it may be that Lithuanians and Jews will never agree on the events of World War II, because they are each viewing them from a separate reality.    But that should not be cause for playing fast and loose with historical facts, as Diedier Bertin and Olga Zabludoff, have done.  

Lithuania and the Holocaust, a comment to the Didier Bertin article:

Lithuania cannot appease
both world Jewry and
far-right extremists

Olga Zabludoff

By: Olga Zabludoff
Washington, DC, USA

I commend Didier Bertin's knowledgeable and sensitive observations in his article "Lithuania and the Memory of the Holocaust." My comments here are more in the form of a PS to Mr. Bertin's words. My take-off point is his reference to the term “Double Genocide,” a government-endorsed concept that has been bandied about in Lithuanian political circles in recent times. But more about this later. Mr. Bertin borrows the term for application in a different dual context: the original genocide of the Jewish people and the current movement on the part of the Lithuanian government to neutralize if not to obliterate the remembrance of the Holocaust. 

Last week I visited a photographic exhibition at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the Embassy of Lithuania, the exhibit was titled "The First Lithuanians in Texas." The introduction to the exhibit explained that because the first Lithuanian immigrants to the United States had quickly assimilated into the mainly German community in which they had settled, their contributions to the economic and cultural development of Texas have never been recognized or commemorated. These first Lithuanian immigrants to the US constituted a small group of Evangelical Lutherans from Lithuania Minor who arrived in Yorktown, De Witt County, in South Texas in 1852.

The exhibit is based on more than 30 years of archival research and will travel and has traveled extensively. The research into this ethnic group's migration has triggered the erection of historical markers by historical commissions, numerous articles in the press, archives implanted in the San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures and the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago -- all this to preserve the memory of, to recognize and to honor the contributions of, the first Lithuanian immigrants to the US.

That is actually very worthy and commendable. They are preserving and extolling a true history of a small segment of their ancestry. But what I find ironic is the double standard: the expression of such national pride in their legacy in the US while simultaneously often omitting the memory of a once-thriving Lithuanian-Jewish community (except in events intended as PR for Jewish, American and other Western audiences). The Litvak community existed for centuries throughout Lithuania. Its contributions to the nation's economy and culture were enormous. Yet the living remnants of that community, which include Holocaust survivors who had heroically resisted the Nazis, are currently being harassed and hounded by the Lithuanian government; while 96% of the last of the Litvak population lies mainly in mass grave sites that have melted into the landscape. In many cases the markers to these killing sites, put up thanks to Britain's Lord Janner, were placed to be invisible from the adjacent main roads.   

Having said this, it would not be entirely fair and balanced if I failed to mention the various initiatives of the Lithuanian government in recent times – initiatives focused on repairing the Jewish problems they face both in their country and with world Jewry in general.

The year 2011 has been proclaimed a Holocaust Commemorative Year in Lithuania, but the goodwill inspired was sadly more than counterbalanced by the parliament's proclamation of a second commemorative year, one which in effect honors the killers, the members of the Lithuanian Activist Front and other "national heroes" who began to butcher Jewish neighbors in dozens of towns before the Germans had even arrived. It is morally incongruous to issue simultaneous years of commemoration -- one for the victims, and one for the local participants in the genocide -- and expect to have any good come of it for the country.

In early July memorial ceremonies were held at the mass grave in Ponar (Paneriai), where more than 70,000 Jews from the Vilna (Vilnius) area were murdered in the Holocaust. The following week a commemoration was held at the killing site in Plungyan (Plunge), where 1800 Jews had been murdered. Both events were attended by Lithuanian dignitaries and foreign visitors who were embarrassed and appalled to discover that the memorials at these killing sites had been freshly desecrated. The filthy anti-Semitic graffiti was quickly covered up and cleaned up, but not a single arrest has been made and all mention of the desecration was avoided. These crimes of hatred appear to go uninvestigated in any serious way. And so it is with many of the “goodwill” gestures of the Lithuanian government: what it does with one hand it undoes with the other.

One has to question also the motives of the government in what appears on the surface to be an improved attitude toward their tiny Jewish minority, toward the Holocaust in general and other issues which interest world Jewry. But Lithuania’s new politics of the Holocaust is only one step up from revisionism: They are now marketing a new concept – “Double Genocide” -- that equates the suffering and annihilation of the Jews under the Nazi regime with the pain and oppression of the Lithuanian people under the Soviet regime. In fact, they created a commission within their government to arrive at, and to export, these findings.

Cynical as it seems, I have to conclude that the motives of the government are more self-serving than soul-searching. Lithuania is out to improve its tarnished image in the world, especially as a member of the European Union. Strong nationalistic views dominate the society while their tiny Jewish population doesn’t carry much political weight.

It is a difficult balancing act, one that may not be possible. Until Lithuanian leaders realize that they cannot appease both world Jewry and far-right extremist factions simultaneously with two-track politics, their future will be as scarred as their past. I continue to live in the hope that enlightened Lithuanian people will themselves find the voice and courage to stand up proud and tall against the double-game policies of their government that are doing so much damage, and which could so rapidly be turned into constructive energy for partnership and genuine reconciliation.

Reply to the article of Mr. Plasseraud published in VilNews in October 2011

Lithuania and the memory
of Holocaust

By Didier Bertin, President of the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model (France)-14 October 2011

We love Lithuania and its wonderful and precious language and fine people! The sole acute problem of Lithuania might be its government.

There is still a lot to do in this country for Human Rights Organizations like fighting Racism, antisemitism, Homophobia and promoting education and free information as the corner stone of democracy for a member-State of the European Union.

Mr. Plasseraud reminded important criticisms which could be made in Lithuania and that he does not share  despite they are true in our opinion: The obliteration of the participation of Lithuanian militias in Pogroms  and  Holocaust, the “current” authorization of Nazi Parades and the creation of a new concept which put in equivalence of the Holocaust and the suffering of people under communist dictatorship whose consequence is the arbitrary second ranking of the Holocaust. This concept is named double Genocide and made a mathematical  equality between events, which has no sense in History. In fact this concept aims to obliterate or reduce one of the two components of the equation, which is clearly the Holocaust as this can be seen in Lithuania.

As a matter of fact the Vilnius Genocide Museum displays only facts on the Soviet oppression and we were personally told by a member of the Staff that for “the Jewish things” we have to go to the green hut named “Green House”, which is a very poor small a museum in a wooden hut and which at last refers to the Holocaust. This so called museum is as difficult to find as the Holocaust in the Lithuanian History. However and on top of these negative facts many others were forgotten were forgotten by Mr. Plasseraud.

We were also shocked by similar substantial obliterations in the museum of the 9th  Fort in Kaunas. We had also the opportunity to check the content of a History school book of a 15 years old Lithuanian schoolboy and we noticed that it was far from the richness of our French school  books. The  History school  book  we  saw  was  very slim  and  presented  an  over- simplified version of events.

We understood that the bad treatment of History was deeply rooted in Lithuania when we learned that the public relation manager of the Genocide Center associated to the Genocide museum  and  considered  as  “a  “senior  specialist”  is  the  current  leader  of  a  Neo-Nazi organization.

96% of the Lithuanian Jews were killed in 4 years, which is the highest country rate of extermination of the Holocaust and of course 96% of the Lithuanian people were not killed in such proportion over a so short period and then were not victim of an equivalent genocide.

Lithuanian people still exist and are active in Lithuania when the Jewish people almost entirely disappeared. The double genocide is clearly a fake concept probably developed for ideological reasons. We are on the side of the victims of Genocides and we are thus opposed to the over-utilization of the word “Genocide” in order to preserve its real meaning. The over- utilization of this word obfuscates the responsibility of perpetrators of “real Genocides” as the Holocaust and the Genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia.

Lithuania is the sole country of the planet, which currently tries to prosecute Holocaust Survivors and members of the resistance against Nazis during World War II. The reason for this harassment is that few of them are still alive and witnessed militias members participating to the holocaust while Lithuanian authorities want to consider them as resistants. Lithuanian authorities went too far in asking Interpol to hunt these heroes. Their last request to Interpol in order to hunt a very old Holocaust survivor in Israel was made at the end of August 2011 with of course no result but a lot of international protestations, which are detrimental for the whole people of Lithuania.

Lithuania is also the sole country on the planet to have legalized the display of the Swastika in
2010 and this is a shame for the whole European Union and provocation against European
Ethics. This sole fact is very eloquent and should lead Mr. Plasseraud to review his position.

The duly authorized Nazi Parades in Vilnius are totally intolerable in European Union and should also be considered as a provocation against European Ethics. A Member of Parliament as the above mentioned “Senior Specialist” of the Genocide center participated both with the mob to the last 2011 Nazi Parade in Vilnius.

In June 2011, a conference was organized by the Genocide center in the premises of the Lithuanian Parliament. The target of this conference among others was the rehabilitation of the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) who initiated with others the Pogroms that constitute the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust.
The  Lithuanian  Activist  Front  –LAF  and  other  participants  took  the  opportunity of  the withdrawal of the  Red Army and the fact that the German Army did not yet arrived to barbarically murder 5 000  Jews in 5 days from 25 June to 29 June 1941 in the sole area of Kaunas ( similar events of smaller magnitude occurred in other cities).

The fact that “the Patriotic Youth” who currently utilizes the slogan “Thank God, I am white” is currently  subsidized by the authorities as are other far rightist organizations, is another outrage against the terms of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

As a matter of fact there is a “Double Genocide” in Lithuania which is the genocide of the Jewish people and today the Genocide of the remembrance of their martyrdom.

Fighting for  the  remembrance  of  the  martyrdom  of  the  Jewish people cannot be  called “gesticulations” as said Mr. Plasseraud but is a duty of anyone defending Human Rights.

We also want to respectfully remind readers that Russia was an ally during World War II, and despite Communism’s atrocious dictatorship we must not forget the sacrifice of the lives of
13.5 million Russian soldiers without which Western Europe might not have been easily freed from the Nazis by the other allies. If the Nazis were not defeated as they were, there would have been no Lithuania to regain its freedom in 1990/1991, because it seems clear today that its Germanisation was in their agenda.

For  more  information  on  this  topic:  www.DefendingHistory.com,,  Lithuania  and  Baltic- countries pages of www.OperationLastChance.org and  www.euro-social-hr.org

Thank you and greetings from France,

DIDIER BERTIN

PRESIDENT

SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS MODEL (FRANCE)   http://www.euro-social-hr.org

Lithuania and the memory
of the Shoah (Holocaust)

By Yves Plasseraud, Paris

May Lithuania rot in hell for a thousand years! This is what one could recently read in a Letter to VilNews’ Editor. This vindictive sentence sums up, in a nutshell, the language of a number of the current Western (including Israeli) and Russian discourses on this Baltic country. The rationale behind this demonization is what the authors of these writings consider as the radical and supposedly built-in anti-Semitism of the Lithuanians.

To support their demonstration, they argue that the « Lithuanians » have recently been systematically trying to obliterate their massive participation in the Shoah (Holocaust) by putting forward the forged thesis of the so-called « double genocide ». Two of their main arguments in this respect are the Lithuanian support to the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, and on the one hand, the name and the exhibits of the Vilnius Genocide Museum on the other hand (displaying much more about the Soviet oppression than about the Nazi one).

These two points are indeed objectively questionable and, more generally, despite many significant progresses, there are evidently a number of things to criticize in the Lithuanian handling of the Jewish question. Nothing however justifies the current intensity of their gesticulations and the « ontological » hate against this country they manifest ! In these matters, Lithuania is certainly not worse than most of the post-soviet countries of the East-Central European Area. Amongst the nations of the area, Lithuania is probably the one which has accomplished the biggest steps toward recognition and information of its dark pages in history, and these critics appear to systematically ignore this fact. The recent reaction of the informed public about the recent neo-Nazi parade in Vilnius offers a good illustration of this evolution.

If these current harsh and oversized critics really wanted to help the Lithuanian society progress forward on the way of recognition and democracy, it seems evident that they would adopt a more acceptable and convincing language. They would also address the Lithuanian public and not the Western media which are basically very uniformed of these matters and furthermore deprived of any contacts with the Lithuanian population.

If their aim is really an improvement of the situation on the Eastern-Central European ground at large, it also appears that they should concentrate on what takes place currently in the field of human rights. In this respect, a country like Russia where racism is unfortunately omnipresent and where historical revisionism is often a state Policy should be a central preoccupation! On the contrary, they regularly side-up with Moscow in criticizing the small neighbouring countries!

No, their attitude is not rational and obviously originates from somewhere else and has other objectives which – at this point – are unfortunately not very clear.

Night Knight

by KR Slade

I finished at school then home I came.
And fourteen days past Christmas next
my father went in sleep to his grave.
When I had forgotten so long before
the stories at bedtime that he had told.
I’d always to sleep and miss some part
but waked again to hear some more;
so all the story I’d often heard but never
remembered from start to end, the all.
Wasn’t it just of our to-make-believe ?
Didn’t we laugh because it wasn’t true ?
But now I know that jest was only just
to make it less scary for then and now.
The legend that would for me come true.

What little child dreams not of knights ?
Big they; strong; protect from dark nights.
The horse must of white, so too the armoured knight.
With touches of gold on spurs and swords,
handles, hilt, and harness: to herald.
Shield, with that more-ancient cross of ours,
held high on arm to cover heart to thwart,
while the hand holding reins aims stead.
Above all: sword drawn, held high, the ready.
Always red: all-behind Sir Knight and horse
on fields of battles: that is a crest of blood.
That mighty, charging, mounted knight be Vytis.
We, who know, are of his people, tribe, and nation.
He knows us, each and every one of us that be,
and may again demand any/all of us to his army;
and each and every one of us, we’d have no choice,
have to go, to answer the call, mustered we’d must.
But not to worry, you my cousins; just this, a story.
Legends have their ways with little boys and girls.
And scary times remember many bedroom nights.
Makes sleep so preferable to wakened fright.

An anniversary later of Dad’s death came Vytis.
For others he comes at times significant to them.
Riding calmly to my bedside that unexpected night;
Warm moist breath again from horse’s hairy nostrils
tickled my belly, made me giggle, awakened me gently.
We needed not introductions, the Sir Knight and I.
We had been known to each, the other, long-time now.
He spoke to me in a language that I did not know;
no matter language; I knew his message instinctively.
His message: he was going to be coming back for me.

Further anniversaries passed; nothing new much noticed.
Then, un-foretold was to be what was the penultimate:
Vytis and stead arrived on the hour’s time, with news
that anniversary next, that I was to be ready-waiting;
When I was going with them, and never coming back.
To a far-off land, I’d never known: but there, home.
No, I would not need to take any thing, all awaited me.
There was no thing more to do, to come more ready.
That night, I would be ready, as had I always been.
It would just be then, that was my-own time to go.

When the time was coming, I was so much excited.
Many nights I could not sleep, for not knowing when.
The days I busied in preparing, yet not-knowing what,
until consumed by unknown, but certain fate, I slept.
To be awakened once again by horsy, hairy breath,
Soft, nudging nose caressing, tickling me to wake.
But it was only noble horse, and me; no knight.
No knight; at least not yet, until I dressed myself
in that white shining armour, so heavily laden-on,
from on horse’s back to mine, together to horseback.
I was quite surprised to know how it all fit together.
Seemed to come quite natural, one piece, then the next.
I mounted, rode some, then we went from trot to gallop.
To more time in air than to touching ground we went.
Until I was feeling as comfortable as ever I had known,
and there afterwards as fearless as I have never known.
My left side shielding sword sheath near to my dagger.
Reins effortlessly I holding to my horse’s bridled head,
that so-gallant beast, my friend, who knew my mind.
My right arm drew and brought up that mighty sword.
Above my helmet, to sail and rudder through the wind.
When in time a voice in passing yelled to me, “Vytis !”
I turned to look, in autonomic acknowledgment.
When then, I remembered all, that of the legend old.
How Vytis is reborn/renewed, from time-to-time.

For an unknown time since, I live in a forest deep.
And there when I do sleep, my horse be by me;
I am-become the warrior, not ever unescorted.
He standing by my trident boughs of mighty oak;
still, always warming me: his body and breath.
I safe at home in my sacred three-forked tree fort.
He still always holding all my armour, at the ready.
With close nearby other faithful sons and daughters,
in our quiet armies ready, as we must always be.
And hover-over all of us does stand guard our God,
Perkunas, his thunder ready; never does He sleep;
old-looking, ancient man, white haired and bearded:
God of all thunder, lightening too; chief of all the gods.

So sleep you well too, now, all my young cousins,
you of our nation now republic’d, finally, once again.
You: safe, secure, with good tomorrows coming.
Remember: be ready, always, to take your turn as Vytis.
And now rest well, to know and remember: legends live.

All Rights Reserved: 2004

kenmunications@gmail.com

LITHUANIA - IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
A chronicle of historic and contemporary Lithuania and her relations to the world

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=886

I have, over the years since I first came to Lithuania from my native Norway in 1990, often wondered why authorities or other institutions here haven’t published a chronicle describing the many ties and touching points this amazing country has to the rest of the world throughout historical and modern times.

Because Lithuania is a country that cannot be understood if you don’t know at least something about its exceptional past and its extraordinary ties with Italy, India, South Africa, Israel, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Crimea/Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Australia and America.

This was why I some years ago put together my own electronic ‘Chronicle of Lithuania in a global perspective’. that I often have used for presentations to guests and others with some interest in this little country that once was a ‘superpower’ of world class and for hundreds of years a thriving cradle for co-existence between people from many nations, cultures and religions. Or, as the British historian Norman Davies puts it: “Lithuania was a haven of tolerance”. Davies was not the only one who took notice of this. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536) is quoted as stating; “I congratulate this nation [Lithuania] which now, in sciences, jurisprudence, morals, and religion, and in all that separates us from barbarism, is so flourishing that it can rival the first and most glorious of nations.”

I know that foreign embassies and international companies, as well as many individuals, for many years have been using my ‘chronicle’ when they try to describe Lithuania to people and institutions in other countries, and I also urge you, dear readers, to pass on a link to this 'chronicle' to all your friends and acquaintances. That’s how we together can make Lithuania better known and understood for people around the globe...

Please keep in mind, however, that this is my personal collection of articles and impressions, not in chronological order, hence it might very well be that a historian would have chosen other articles and put together the information in a completely different manner. Nevertheless; have a good read. I believe afterwards you will agree with me that Lithuania is a truly amazing and far too little known spot on the world map!

Aage Myhre, Editor-in-Chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

TOPIC 1:

Lithuania’s peaceful fight for new freedom 1988-91

The little stroke that fell the great bear and opened for the new era of a united Europe

"Lithuanians, do not resist, your government has deceived you. Go home to your families and children."

This was the repeated announcement from the Soviet military sound trucks rolling through the streets of Vilnius in January 1991. But luckily for Lithuania and for the new united Europe we today take more or less for granted, there was a music professor and a complete little nation supporting him that wanted it all differently. Hadn‘t it been for this peaceful fight for regained freedom against an occupation and a ruling the people of the Baltic States never wanted or agreed to, the map of Europe would most likely have looked very different today...

If there were those in the West who hadn’t heard about Lithuania before, they almost certainly had by the end of the day, January 13, 1991. That was the day Soviet troops cracked down in Vilnius and the resulting bloodshed made headlines around the world. The action was apparently a bid to stop Lithuania’s independence drive in its tracks. By the time the firing stopped and the smoke cleared, more than a dozen people lay dead, and hundreds more were injured. The crackdown, and particularly the killings at the TV tower, not only brought fame and sympathy to Lithuania from around the world, it was also a defining moment for Lithuanians themselves. The bloodshed meant they had crossed a point of no return. If there was ever any notion of reconciling with Moscow, it was now unthinkable. For those watching from abroad, Vytautas Landsbergis was the central player in the drama unfolding in Vilnius. The colourful, quick-tempered music professor became Lithuania’s president (or chairman of the Lithuanian Supreme Council) in 1990 and, from that time on, his name became almost synonymous with the Lithuanian independence movement. His blunt talk about breaking free of the Soviet Union and about Lithuania’s moral right to be able to do so startled observers in the West almost as much as it infuriated the Kremlin.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=3642

TOPIC 2:

South Africa, home to 70,000 Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanians dominate the Jewish community in South Africa to an extent seen in no other country, even their former home. "We have around 80,000 to 90,000 Jews in South Africa, and about 80 percent of them are of Baltic descent, most of them from Lithuania," said David Saks, an historian and researcher at the Jewish Board of Deputies in Johannesburg. "We probably have the most 'Lithuanian' Jewish community in the world," said Saks, whose own grandparents came from Lithuania. This ratio even exceeds that of Lithuania itself as most of the Baltic state's small Jewish community, now numbering a mere 5,000, is comprised mostly of immigrants who arrived from different parts of the Soviet Union after World War Two.The war devastated Lithuanian Jewry, once a leading centre of Jewish thought and culture. Historians estimate that 94 percent of the country's pre-war Jewish population of 220,000 perished in the Holocaust. The capital Vilnius, once known as the Jerusalem of the North, was home to a thriving community of 60,000 Jews, with more than 90 synagogues and the biggest Yiddish library in the world. Aside from one functioning synagogue, few traces of its rich Jewish past remain. "South Africa is more Litvak than Lithuania itself...we see our culture and society have been preserved there," said playwright and novelist Mark Zingeris, one of the few Litvaks remaining in Lithuania.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=1703

TOPIC 3:

Italy’s extraordinary, little known role in Lithuania

When Lithuania’s Grand Duke, Sigismund the Old in 1518 married the Italian Princess Bona Sforza, this became an outstanding manifestation of the already strong relationship between Italy and Lithuania. The royal couple created together an Italian community within the court and Italian culture became the preoccupation of the Vilnius city elite. Macheroni, skryliai, and even the confection marcipanus became staples among the cogniscenti and life at court became a series of cultural events, with rich noblemen competing for extravagance. During the rule of Sigismund the Old the palace was greatly expanded, to meet the new needs of the Grand Duke and Duchess. Another wing was added, as well as a third floor and the gardens were also extended. The palace reconstruction plan was probably prepared by Italian architect Bartolomeo Berrecci da Pontassieve.

The Royal Palace – that now again is being rebuilt – was remodelled by Bona Sforza and Sigismund the Old in Renaissance style. The plans were prepared by Italian architects, including Giovanni Cini da Siena, Bernardino de Gianotis Zanobi, and others. Among the many visitors to the Palace was Ippolito Aldobrandini, who later became Pope Clement VIII, also this emphasizing the extraordinary connections between Italy and Lithuania that lasted for hundreds of years – also giving background for the saying that ‘Vilnius is the world’s most Italian city outside Italy’. Throughout the Renaissance, when Italy was the leading trading centre and a melting pot for the world’s greatest civilizations, Vilnius also became a leading Renaissance centre of world class.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=2927 and https://vilnews.com/?p=1652

TOPIC 4:

The Lithuanian-Americans, a nation outside the nation

Many Lithuanians immigrated to the New World before the American Revolution. The first may have been a Lithuanian physician, Dr. Aleksandras Kursius, who is believed to have lived in New York as early as 1660. Most of the other Lithuanians who ventured to the Americas during this period were members of the noble class or practitioners of particular trades. But the first really significant wave of Lithuanian immigration to the United States began in the late 1860s, after the American Civil War. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an estimated 300,000 Lithuanians journeyed to America. A flow that was later halted by the combined effects of World War I, the restriction of immigration into the United States and the achievement in 1918 of Lithuanian independence.

The second wave of immigration had a greater impact on U.S. census figures. Following World War II, a flood of displaced refugees fled west to escape the Russian reoccupation of Lithuania. Eventually 30,000 Dipukai (war refugees or displaced persons) settled in the United States, primarily in cities in the East and the Midwest. These immigrants included many trained and educated leaders and professionals who hoped to return someday to Lithuania. The heightening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union—known as the Cold War—dampened these expectations, and many Lithuanians sought to create a semi permanent life in the United States. By 1990 the U.S. Bureau of the Census listed 811,865 Americans claiming "Lithuanian" as a first or second ancestry.

The main areas of Lithuanian settlement in the United States included industrial towns of the Northeast, the larger cities of the Northeast and the Midwest, and the coal fields of Pennsylvania and southern Illinois. According to the 1930 census report, only about 13 percent of Lithuanians lived in rural areas, and even fewer—about two percent—were involved in agriculture. Nearly 20 percent of all Lithuanian immigrants settled in Chicago alone. Throughout the twentieth century, Lithuanian Americans began to climb up the economic ladder and gain an important place in their local communities. This mobility allowed them to enter the American mainstream.

Two important developments in Lithuania led to the growth of a strong Lithuanian American ethnic identity: the late nineteenth-century rise of Lithuanian national consciousness and the achievement of Lithuanian independence in 1918. Lithuanian Americans were staunch supporters of their newly independent homeland during the 1920s and 1930s, and some even returned to assist in the restructuring of the country's economy and government.

The post World War II wave of Lithuanian immigrants—the Dipukai—also experienced a surge of Lithuanian consciousness. These later immigrants saw themselves as an exiled community and clung to their memory of two decades of freedom in Lithuania. They developed an extensive network of schools, churches, and cultural institutions for the maintenance of Lithuanian identity in the United States.

See also:
https://vilnews.com/?p=2071
https://vilnews.com/?p=3798
https://vilnews.com/?p=766
https://vilnews.com/?p=2027
https://vilnews.com/?p=762
https://vilnews.com/?p=6704

TOPIC 5:

Lithuania and India - same language root and more…

It’s early morning in Delhi, India. I have been invited to the small, dark office of Professor Lokesh Chandra, one of India’s leading experts on Sanskrit and Buddhism. “The same year I was born, 1927, my father went to London to get a degree in Lithuanian language. He spoke the language fluently, but he never visited Lithuania”, tells the elderly professor, still with his Kashmir coat and cap on, despite the outside temperature of close to 30⁰ Celsius. And I soon learn that the professor’s knowledge about the connections between Old Sanskrit and the Lithuanian language and ancient cultural ties between India and Lithuania is nothing but amazing.

It is a common belief that there is a close similarity between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages; Lithuanian being the European language grammatically closest to Sanskrit. It is not difficult to imagine the surprise of the scholarly world when they learned that even in their time somewhere on the Nemunas River lived a people who spoke a language as archaic in many of its forms as Sanskrit itself. Although it was not exactly true that a professor of Sanskrit could talk to Lithuanian farmers in their language, coincidences between these two languages were truly amazing, for example:

Sanskrit sunus - Lithuanian sunus; son Sanskrit viras - Lithuanian vyras; man

Sanskrit avis - Lithuanian avis; sheep Sanskrit dhumas - Lithuanian dumas; smoke

Sanskrit padas - Lithuanian padas; sole

We can assert that these Lihuanian words have not changed their forms for the last five thousand years!

Read also: https://vilnews.com/?p=4425 and https://vilnews.com/?p=4434

TOPIC 6:

Lithuania 1000 years in 2009!

In 2009, Lithuania celebrated its Millennium – as the name Lithuania was mentioned for the first time in 1009 in the Annales Quedlinburgenses books. Lithuania's name Lietuva is considered to have developed from the name of the 11-km long rivulet Lietauka. The area between the middle Nemunas and the Neris where Kernavė, Nemenčinė and Maišiagala now are is believed to have been the land called Lietuva. Duke Mindaugas was the ruler there, and the River Lietauka ran through that area and fell into the Neris upstream of the Šventoji. The Land of Lietuva (Lithuania) is supposed to have been named after the river, and the name was later extended to the State of Lithuania. Other sources indicate that the Land of Lietuva, was on the right bank of the Šventoji in the area between Anykščiai and Viešintai and prove their conclusion by the existence of the administrative unit, Vaitystė of Leitava, there.

"In 1009 St Bruno, who is called Boniface (Bonifatius), Archbishop and monk, in the second year of his conversion, on the border between Russia and Lithuania (Lituae), having been hit on the head by the pagans, and his 18 men went to heaven on the 23^rd of February. "There are several sources that mention the event - the killing of the missionary but they refer to Prussia rather than Lithuania, which proves that both Germans and Poles did not know about the existence of Lithuanians then. They thought that Prussians were the only Balts (or the majority of Balts). Quedlinburg Annals mentioned Lithuania because they were keen on precision and the information was received from St Bruno's entourage. The story about St Bruno describes the political organisation of Lithuanians, which was peculiar and not characteristic of other Baltic tribes before the 13^th century.

TOPIC 7:

Modern Lithuania in a new Europe

Lithuania has shown an impressive economic performance since its liberation from the USSR. “The Ballistic Baltic” and “The Baltic Tiger” are only two of the labels attached by foreign market observers to signify the speed and expected sustainability of this economic growth.

However, main restructuring based growth resources are coming to the end, which implies the need for search of new growth resources or decline of the growth cycle of the economy has as its vital economic interest to incentives and promote higher-quality high-tech industries, through R&D support, high-tech industry incubators, and appropriate educational focus.

The general strengths of Lithuanian national innovation system lies in the well developed and continuing its academic tradition higher education sector with strong science and technology research tradition and engineering orientation.

This results in a relatively high share of the population with tertiary education, high numbers of S&T graduates among them, and cultural orientation of the younger generation towards higher education. However, restricted resources for R&D and the higher education sector combined with the growing numbers of students at all higher education levels doubts the quality of education, especially in areas where technological based education is significantly important. Also low or non existing investments of businesses in vocational training lead to obsolete qualifications not suitable for high tech high skill work. The weak links between business and higher education and R&D communities result not only in obsolescing qualifications of the highly educated labour force, but also in low value added innovations, developed without input from the R&D sector.

TOPIC 8:

Karaims and Tatars - Turkish nationalities in Lithuania

Since the 14th Century two Turkish nationalities – Tatars and Karaims – have been living in Lithuania. From linguistic and ethno genetic points of view they belong to the oldest Turkish tribes - Kipchaks. This ethnonym (Kipchak) for the first time was mentioned in historical chronicles of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC. Anthropologically ancient Kipchaks were very close to Siberia inhabitants Dinlins, who lived on both sides of the Sajan Mountains in Tuva and the northern part of Gob. In 5th century BC Kipchaks lived in the West of Mongolia, in 3rd century BC they were conquered by Huns. Since the 6 - 8 centuries, when the first nomadic Turkish empires were founded, the Kipchak’s fate is closely connected with the history and migration of the Middle Asia tribes. In Turkish literature they are known as Kipchaks. The history of Karaims is connected with Lithuania since 1397-1398. According to the tradition, The Great Duke of Lithuania Vytautas, after one of the marches to the Golden Horde steppes, had to bring from the Crimea several hundred Karaims and settle them in the Great Duchy of Lithuania. Transference of several hundred Karaim families and several thousand Tatars was not done once. It was in connection with the state policy of The Great Duchy to inhabit the empty areas, build towns and castles and to develop trade and economic life. Initially, Karaims were settled in Trakai between the two castles of The Great Duke, present Karaim Street. Later they were found living in Biržai, Naujamiestis, Pasvalys and Panevėžys. However, Trakai has always been the community's administrative and spiritual centre for Karaims in Lithuania, nowadays more and more also for Karaims throughout the world.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=2942 

TOPIC 9:

Lithuania 500 years ago was Europe’s largest country

“Lithuania was a superpower much longer than USA has been“. This is how I often tease my American friends arriving in Vilnius. But the teasing is in fact not so far away from reality, as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) for 300 years was one of the leading and largest nations of the World, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

It all started with King Mindaugas (1203-1263), Lithuania‘s first and only king, who in 1236 defeated the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and united the different Lithuanian tribes under his reign. But the real expansion began when Grand Duke Gediminas (1275 – 1341) came to power in 1316, and started a new dynasty of leaders. Gediminas employed several forms of statesmanship to expand and strengthen the GDL. He invited members of religious orders to come to the Grand Duchy, announced his loyalty to the Pope and to his neighbouring Catholic countries and made political allies with dukes in Russia as well as with the Poles through marriage to women in his family. Gediminas’ political skills are revealed in a series of letters written to Rome and nearby cities. He makes mention of the Franciscan and Dominican monks who had come to the GDL by invitation and were given the rights to preach, baptise and perform other religious services. He also included an open invitation to artisans and farmers to come and live in the GDL, promising support and reduced taxes to those who would come. Under Vytautas the Great (1350-1430), Lithuania‘s military and economy grew even stronger, and he was the one expanding the Grand Duchy‘s frontiers south to the Black Sea. The Grand Duchy was at its largest by the middle of the 15th Century. It existed in the very centre of Europe and comprised the entire territories of contemporary Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, a part of Poland and stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Both Belarus and Ukraine point back to the days when they were part of the thriving GDL as proof of their cultural and political distinction from Russia. Successfully ruled by a dynastic line of dukes, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) developed a highly advanced system of state administration and stove off invading Crusaders longer than any other Central European power. Its statesmen conducted effective foreign policy and military campaigns and created a multi-ethnic state. Though officially ended in 1795, the history of the GDL continues to influence modern-day nationalist thinking in the region.  Not only Lithuania but also Belarus and Ukraine remember the days when they were part of the thriving GDL as proof of their cultural and political strength clearly distinguishing them from Russia.

By the way, Grand Duke Gediminas (1275 – 1341) is my personal favourite among all the Lithuanian nobles, and in my opinion, he was one of the greatest rulers of medieval Europe. He was a man of extraordinary knowledge and wisdom, understanding the importance and advantage of having a multicultural society as the foundation for his new city, more cleverly than most world rulers during the centuries after him. In October 1323, for example,  representatives of the archbishop of Riga, the bishop of Dorpat, the king of Denmark, the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order assembled in Vilnius when Gediminas confirmed his promises and undertook to be baptized as soon as the papal legates arrived. A compact was then signed in Vilnius, in the name of the whole Christian World, between Gediminas and the delegates, confirming the promised privileges. Fifteen months later, on the 25th of January 1325, Gediminas issued circular letters to the principal Hansa towns in Europe offering a free access into his domains to men of every order and profession from nobles and knights to tillers of the soil. The immigrants were to choose their own settlements and be governed by their own laws. After Gediminas, Vilnius emerged over hundreds of years, expanding, changing, and embodying the creative imagination and experience of many generations of architects and builders from Lithuania and abroad. Under the care of generous and perceptive benefactors, it became a city rich in architectural treasures and urban harmony.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?p=326

TOPIC 10:

Lithuania’s new international role – a bridge at the crossroads of east-west-south-north

Today Lithuania is in a unique position to continue and expand its role as a significant transportation hub and meeting point for many neighbouring regions. Lithuania serves as a natural bridge for East - West (Europe-Asia) traffic with transport connections to the Trans-Siberian rail route and direct links with Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as rapidly growing Baltic countries and even East Asia, including China. Nearly half or 45% of Russia’s total foreign trade passes through the Baltic Sea ports. A major advantage of Lithuania lies in its strategic location at the crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe as well as the Baltic Sea region. Lithuania has for centuries been on an important trade route, linking the Baltic Sea Region to the Black Sea. Klaipeda, the country’s sea coast city, has moved from having been an important port city in the Hanseatic League of trading cities around the Baltic and North Sea since the 13th century, to becoming a modern logistic hub for trade and transport between Western and Eastern Europe. Its unfrozen port is the best transportation centre between the east and west. Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is together with the country‘s second largest city, Kaunas, developing into a huge metropolis, showing all the potential of becoming a significant commercial, financial and transportation centre for the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe. Traditions and experience gained during many centuries and historically strong presence of people from many nations and backgrounds are important for conducting economic relations nowadays. In addition, Lithuania is located in one of the most dynamic and competitive areas of the world representing 10 metropolitan areas with over 90 million inhabitants and being the home to well-established companies and product brands and the leading IT and telecom producing area of Europe with the highest cellular telephone penetration in the world.

TOPIC 11:

For hundreds of years Lithuania was the home-country to amazingly thriving Jewish communities

Napoleon Bonaparte was the one who started calling Vilnius ‘Jerusalem of the North’, when he arrived here in June 1812. It was the first and only "Jewish city" Napoleon would ever see. It is said that he became very surprised on what met him in Vilnius, a city so far away from the European mainstreams and still with a lively Mediterranean mood and life. And true enough, the history of the Litvaks, as the Lithuanian Jews are called, is unusual and surprising. It was a history of mostly peaceful coexistence with other peoples and cultures that lasted for more than six centuries. It was a history that spawned an incredible number of eminent Jews. The "Golden Age of Jewry" in Lithuania started with Grand Duke Gediminas (1275-1341), the empire builder who took a liking to foreigners and Jews whose skills and education were badly needed in medieval Lithuania. In the early 1300's he attracted them to his realm with numerous perks, including guarantees of religious freedom and tax exemptions. The Jews of Europe responded in droves, and Vilnius became the heralded centre of Jewish culture and learning. There would be synagogues, schools, theatres, publishing houses and the Yiddish Institute of Higher Learning. At a time when others in Europe were effectively illiterate, all the Jews in Vilnius could read and write. This was so unusual that it provoked the invention of a brand-new word, "Vilner," meaning "an educated man with knowledge." For almost 700 years, the Litvaks became an inseparable part of Lithuanian society, having enriched the country’s economy, culture, science, and education. During the Second World War, about 200,000 (95%), Lithuanian Jews were murdered. This was the greatest loss in all of Eastern and Central Europe. The Nazi Holocaust led to an almost complete extermination of Lithuania’s Jews, and also the destruction of their history and cultural monuments - a most tragic page of Lithuanian history.

See also: https://vilnews.com/?page_id=152 

TOPIC 12:

Poland and Lithuania – an intertwined relationship

Poland and Lithuania have an exceptionally intertwined history since the Middle Ages and, unfortunately - so much has divided and remained problematic between these two close neighbours. But maybe the time now has come to focus on what unites? Maybe it’s time to study the example of the famous writer Czeslaw Milosz?

Nobel Price Winner Czesław Miłosz was born June 30, 1911 in Szetejnie, Lithuania. He spent his youth in Vilnius. During his law studies at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius he created a poets' group called Żagary. He published his first volume of poetry, A Poem in Frozen Time, in 1933. During the German occupation, Miłosz participated in Warsaw's underground                                                                                                        cultural life, even publishing a volume of poetry called Invincible Song.

In 1960 Miłosz moved to the United States, where he became a professor at Berkeley University's department of Slavic literature. Throughout this period, Miłosz mainly published his works in Paris and the United States. Initially he specialized in writing essays but he gradually became a well-known poet. His fame was confirmed by the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and being crowned with the Nobel Prize. In Poland his works were largely absent from the official press, only published occasionally in collective anthologies. Only following his Nobel Prize were Miłosz's poems officially published and only then was he allowed to return to Poland. Miłosz died in 2004, at his home in Kraków, aged 93. His first wife, Janina, had died in 1986; and his second wife, Carol, a U.S.-born historian, in 2002.

TOPIC 13:

600,000 persons from the Baltic States were deported to Siberia during the period 1940-53

The saddest period in the history of Lithuania began in August 1939, when Hitler and Stalin concluded their agreement that divided up Central Europe. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Lithuania was occupied three times: first by the USSR in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and finally by the USSR again in 1944. During the Nazi and Soviet occupations, including 200,000 Holocaust victims, the losses of the population of Lithuania amounted to 33 percent of the total number of the country's population in 1940. Lithuania lost 1 million people to deportations, executions, incarceration, murder of political opposition and forced emigration. Altogether, some 600,000 prisoners were taken from the Soviet occupied Baltic States - Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There were some 10 million inhabitants in all three Baltic States on the eve of the Soviet occupation. Proportionately, the number of Baltic prisoners would be equal to a loss of 20 million in the United States or 5 million in Great Britain. During 1940-1953, some 132,000 Lithuanians were deported to remote areas of the USSR: Siberia, the Arctic Circle zone and Central Asia. They were not allowed to leave remote villages. More than 70 percent of the deportees were women and children. Some 50,000 of the deportees were not able to return to Lithuania. During the same period, another 200,000 people were thrown into prisons. Some 150,000 of them were sent to the Gulags, the USSR‘s concentration camps, situated mostly in Siberia.

See also:
https://vilnews.com/?p=335
https://vilnews.com/?p=2168
https://vilnews.com/?p=6539

TOPIC 14:

The Lithuanian partisan war 1944-53 was the longest and bloodiest guerrilla war of modern Europe

Despite the heroics of the Lithuanian partisans, or Forest Brothers as they became known, they were doomed to failure because it was a fight that was ignored by the West. Their war became known as the ‘unknown’ or ‘hidden’ war. Altogether 22,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters lost their lives in the struggle against the Soviet and NKVD (later to become the KGB) forces. The war continued until 1953, though the last resistance fighter refused to surrender and shot himself in 1965 and another partisan finally came out of hiding in 1986. “The Lithuanians had to choose from three options: to emigrate, stay in Lithuania and suffer the oppression and humiliation, or go into a forest to defend their Fatherland,” said Albinas Kentra, chairman of the Lithuanian Forest Brothers Union. The basic goal of the guerrilla warfare was aimed at the re-establishment of Lithuanian Sovereignty. Thousands of men gathered in the forests in the hope that they would not have to hold out for long – only until the Peace Conference decided to implement the principle of national self-determination.

See also:
https://vilnews.com/?p=5391
https://vilnews.com/?page_id=131&paged=2

TOPIC 15:

Lithuania – a land of unspoilt nature, an example for countries around the world

Nature is everywhere in Lithuania. Even the approaches to Vilnius are surrounded by forests, and every spring, a woodland grouse, the capercaillie one of the rarest birds, carries out its mating rituals just 20 kilometres from the town centre in an old pine forest which has been preserved for it.

It would be difficult today to identify the beginning of the environmental tradition in Lithuania. Perhaps we could look for it in the statutes of the 16th century, the key state legal documents. Perhaps it started even earlier, in the sacred oak groves that could be damaged only by the winds and storms, but never by man. The first nature reserve, at Žuvintas, was founded 70 years ago. There, everything is left to nature. No man’s foot can step in it. Birds and animals there may feel that their nests and offspring are safe. Today the network of protected areas covers 12 per cent of the country, including five national parks, four sanctuaries, 30 regional parks and multiple reserves.
Every ancient tree, or rock in an interesting shape and form of relief, is protected.

TOPIC 16:

Lithuania on Mars

Lithuania was once known as the Soviet Silicon Valley, and also today the country has a very strong research and development sector. Lithuanian world-class specialists cooperate with NASA, NATO, Volvo, Saab, Philips, and many others in the fields of biotechnology, biochemistry, laser optics, chemistry, physics, etc.

According to Paris‘ “Le Monde”, Lithuania is the biggest exporter of femtosecond lasers in the world. Among the clients is NASA, i.e. using Lithuanian laser technology for analyses of minerals on Mars! A country of 3.5 million people, Lithuania, has about 15 laser producers, employing about 300 laser specialists, half of which are engineers and doctors of sciences. Lithuania’s laser sector grows about 15-20 % annualy, which is twice faster than the whole economy of the country. Lithuanian laser production is demanded by the best scientific laboratories in Europe and the US.

Lithuania has six science and technology parks which develop favourable infrastructure for the establishment of new innovative businesses in Lithuania and encourage the growth of existing ones engaged in the development of innovative technologies. Lithuania’s science and technology parks seek to provide a comfortable environment for commercializing R&D activities and integrating business, science, and research by supporting knowledge transfers leading to the exploitation of research results and to the development of marketable products and services. According to the 7 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in 2006, Lithuania demonstrated an advanced e-business environment. Lithuania was acknowledged as one of the emerging markets where mobile phone penetration is several times that of fixed lines. This, plus a rapid increase in the number of WiFi hotspots in its capital and other cities, has helped improve overall connectivity for its consumers and businesses. In Lithuania, e-banking, e-government services and mobile internet are being used in everyday business and life and are becoming increasingly popular.

“Lithuanian scientists are likely to become leaders in certain spheres of world science.” (Achilleas Mitsos, Director General of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research).

 
Zecharia Plavin: “One has to play from the heart and in search for the eternal truth, otherwise the music becomes trite”

Beginning his early piano education and performing career under Mrs. Devora Yellin and Prof. Marietta Azizbekova in Lithuania, where he was born in 1956, Zecharia Plavin emigrated to Israel, in 1977.  There he continued his musical studies at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv under Prof. Victor Derevianko concluding in 1998 with his doctoral research on Ernest Bloch under Prof. Jehoash Hirshberg. A prizewinner of competitions in Lithuania and Israel, amongst them the Shapira Prize of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation in 1980 and the Bachauer Memorial Prize in Belgium, Dr. Plavin has concertized widely throughout Israel, Europe and the United States.  Since his first appearance with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1980 he has performed with most major Israeli orchestras.

His professional credentials are of truly international scope.  In addition to his teaching at Bar Ilan University and, for the past ten years as faculty member, at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Dr. Plavin has given recitals, workshops and master classes in Lithuania; the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany; the South Bohemian Music Festival and the Prague Master Classes in the Czech Republic; as well as at the San Diego State University and the Hartt School of Music and in spring of 2001 the University of Illinois.   

As a faculty member of the HED Centre of Yehud, his duties included the organization of international seminars of contemporary chamber music.  The Center (now located in Tel Aviv) was designed to provide a platform for composers in Israel and, in this capacity Prof. Zecharia Plavin has worked with many distinguished composers including Sir Harrison Birthwistle and Einojuhanni Rautavaara.
His broad knowledge of art, literature and history as well as his profound familiarity with the life and circumstances of the composers of the selected repertoire allows him to bring special qualities to his music making as well as his teaching.   

A thoughtful and searching musicality characterizes concerts by this superb musician.  In search for the eternal truth in the music, pianist Zecharia Plavin gives another dimension to his performances:

"This is, quite simply, magnetic playing.   Combining rhythmic strength with improvisatory fire, structural intuition with tonal finesse, Plavin projects both the intellect and the passion of the music with a conviction that's utterly compelling." 

• Prof. Peter J. Rabinowitz, Contributing Editor at Fanfare

“His immersion in the music is so intense that its spiritual content is exposed and turned convincingly into sonorific substance.” 

• Benjamin Bar-Am Jerusalem Post

“When Plavin reached the huge climax, after which Liszt inserts, abruptly, a moment of complete silence, I found myself holding my breath”

“Ein überragender Pianist, ein grossartiger Meister seines Fachs, der sich nicht nur mit Schumann ausenandergesetzt, sondern ihn auch verinnerlicht hat.”

• Hannoversche Allgemeine

“His playing is characterized by great taste, intelligence and fantasy.  His very accomplished approach to diversified styles is made possible by a very strong technique always at the service of his art, never an end by itself.”

• Prof. Luiz de Moura Castro, The Hartt School

“…the unique quality of Mr. Plavin’s art is his quite uncanny ability to suggest to the listener the idea or experience behind the inspiration of the composer.”

• Concert pianist Michael Wladkowski, Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris

Ref: http://www.prologue-consulting.com/zechariaplavin.htm

Aage Myhre
Editor-in-Chief

The woman I talked to at today's National Day reception at the Norwegian Embassy in Vilnius had much good to say about our VilNews e-magazine, and I will not hide that it is good to hear such words – that what we have tried to address and achieve understanding for, in and about this country, is so well received, perceived and understood by one of our readers.

It gives inspiration to continue and an even stronger belief in the power of a free, democratic and outspoken press.

Here is what she said:

"Your VilNews e-magazine contributes more to Lithuania's international reputation than any political leader or advertising campaign has done over the latest  twenty years!"

"The Soviet Union's attack on Lithuania in January 1991 led naturally to an enormous press coverage worldwide but the attention was soon gone and Lithuania did nothing to exploit the 'commercial value' of the great interest that the country was exposed to at the time. And since then, most of the international press coverage of Lithuania has been negative, marked by crimes carried out by individuals and gangs from here."

"Then comes VilNews, and suddenly we have access to a unique publication that explains Lithuania to the world in a completely different and smart way that makes the country sound and look very interesting again. Even those times when you criticize various aspects one understands that the criticism is based on well founded thoughts, fairness and a balanced approach. You are simply changing the image and perception of Lithuania!"

"I am also very impressed with the unusual combination you present of news, blogs, comments, and the enormous background material - not least that of historical character. It's also very good to see that so many of your readers actually write and communicate actively through the channel you offer them with VilNews. I've actually never seen anything like this anywhere in the world."

"I am now recommending VilNews to all my contacts around the world, and I wish this nation's leaders would study your publication very carefully and pay close attention to and follow up much of what you write and suggest."

Below some other comments we have received over the latest months. We are very grateful for all the good words, but would also like to emphasize that we very much welcome criticism, suggestions and comments of all kinds...