Names of Holocaust Victims to be Read for Fifth Time in Lithuania

The names of Holocaust victims will be read publicly in several Lithuanian cities and towns on Tuesday, September 22, on the eve of the Lithuanian Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Names initiative is being held in Vilnius for the fifth time now and this will be the first time when lists of Vilnius ghetto prisoners will be read at two locations: in the courtyard of the ghetto library and at the Skalvija movie theater. Residents of Jonava, Molėtai, Švėkšna and Jurbarkas will take turns reading the names of Jews murdered in their towns.

I met Yitzhak Arad in the cafeteria of his upscale retirement home outside Tel Aviv. To his enemies, this short man, softened by age and bundled in long sleeves against the facility’s overzealous air conditioning, is a kind of Jewish Kurt Waldheim: a brutal war criminal who deftly covered his tracks and went on to run one of the world’s leading human rights institutions. Waldheim, a former Nazi officer, famously became secretary-general of the United Nations before the truth came out. Arad allegedly committed atrocities against Lithuanian anti-Communists on behalf of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, before moving to Israel and becoming the director of Yad Vashem, the nation’s holocaust museum.

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The 12 years of Nazism (1933-1945) inculcated young Germans with anti-Jewish ideas that continued after the defeat of Hitler, according to a new study on anti-Semitism.

The study, which American and Swiss researchers released Monday, found that Germans who grew up during the 1930s were far more likely than their younger countrymen to have negative attitudes about Jews. It reported that anti-Semitic views were particularly strong among Germans raised in regions of the country that were known for anti-Semitism even before Hitler came to power.

According to the researchers, who analyzed surveys conducted in 1996 and 2006, the findings indicated that Nazi propaganda was highly effective, especially when it confirmed existing beliefs.

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VILNIUS — This month, on the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi regime and the end of World War II — ipso facto the end of the Holocaust — Western leaders have been faced with a symbological conundrum. How might they square honest commemoration of this major anniversary with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s record of progressively more arrogant dictatorship at home and cynical mischief in his near abroad?

Once Moscow made clear that the May 9th parade in the Russian capital would feature his latest tanks and planes, it became certain that most Western leaders would not feel comfortable being there. They do not want to become props for Putin’s attempts to use (as it happens, accurate) World War II history as cover for his indefensible policies and ethos. But in statecraft as in life, there is always an alternative danger that lurks: Do they want to become props for Nazi-apologists’ far-right elements in today’s anti-Russia East European states’ attempts to use (as it happens, inaccurate) World War II history as cover for denial of massive, lethal wartime collaboration, denial of the Soviet peoples’ role in defeating Hitler, and, along the same road, extreme nationalism, racism and a frenzy against Russian-speakers everywhere. Then, add into the unstable mix the American neocon obsession with stoking trouble far and wide to project American power and weapon systems, even where that means violating core American and Western values.

Commentary by Faina Kukliansky, chair of the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Auschwitz in the winter, during International Holocaust Day, was as moving as the Holocaust survivors who met here. My thoughts swirled around the people who are still alive. In Lithuania the only still living survivor is Meyshe Preis, who through some sort of miracle survived the Auschwitz, Stutthoff and Dachau concentration camps. His poor health didn’t allow him to attend the commemoration of Auschwitz victims on January 27. Kings, queens and heads of state did attend. I want the people of Lithuania, her politicians and high-ranking civil servants, and especially her decision makers, to understood that a trip to Auschwitz is not the same thing as travelling to Brussels for the usual meeting.

Seventy years ago the Jew were liberated, but they were persecuted en masse from 1939. Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, foreign minister Linas Linkevičius and the chair of the Lithuanian Jewish Community travelled to the ceremony and were deeply affected by it. I believe their attitude is that of the state regarding Holocaust survivors, whose children and grandchildren now form the basis of our community. I will interject here that representing the community doesn’t mean that some high institutions choose a certain Jew for the post according to merit. That’s how it was for many years. If there’s a Jewish community which elects its chairperson democratically, then the chairperson must represent the community and Lithuania as well, if the community is loyal to the state and sees itself as a part of the country.

Dear Friends,

I have just arrived in Israel from Krakow where we commemorated the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

As I am sure many of you will have seen this historic event was extremely symbolic and significant and it received unprecedented media coverage worldwide. The eyes of the world, this week, were on Auschwitz.

WJC, in partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation, brought 101 survivors of Auschwitz, from 21 countries, together with members of their families, to participate in this auspicious event. Their presence — surely the last time such a large number will be able to gather there — made this commemoration particularly meaningful.

On January 27th the world will come together to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Yet 70 years since end of the most horrific chapter in Europe’s history, anti-Semitism has once again surged to levels unprecedented since the end of the Holocaust, with virtually no part of Europe free from this oldest and most enduring form of hatred.

Whether it is the kosher supermarket attack in Paris this January, the shooting in the Brussels Jewish Museum last year, or frequent assaults against Jews and vandalism of synagogues and Jewish stores, there is an increasingly palpable sense of fear and insecurity among many Jewish communities in Europe.

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