Learning new information

Every day I learn new information. This week, I learned that Lithuania has an “Ambassador-at-large for Holocaust remembrance issues”. He is: His Excellency, Ambassador Arvydas Daunoravičius. Arvydas obviously isn’t doing a good job, because Lithuania’s Holocaust memories are frauds.

OSCE Conference

Screenshot from: https://jp.mfa.lt/default/en/news/lithuania-condemns-russias-fraudulent-claims-of-the-fight-against-nazism-to-justify-its-war-of-aggression-against-ukraine-

To learn from Arvydas’s words, we must understand what he is saying. His words are in italics, my explanations are in normal text:

At the Conference on Addressing Anti-Semitism in the OSCE region, convened by the OSCE Chairpersonship of North Macedonia in Skopje on 6-7 February 2023, Mr. Arvydas Daunoravičius, Ambassador-at-large for the Holocaust remembrance issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, – Holocaust memory in Lithuania is under the auspices of the foreign ministry. I.E. it is designed NOT for domestic consumption but for foreign propaganda. For domestic consumption, Lithuania has the “Genocide Center”; an Orwellian center of historical garbage. Arvydas’s fancy title is meant to distract only.

condemned Russia’s abuse of the argument of the fight against Nazism in its attempt to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine. – Lithuania commoditizes and subverts the memory of the Holocaust for their own use in their war with Russia. A complete inversion of the truth.

“It is a distortion of history and a deep disrespect for the victims of the Holocaust”, – stressed A. Daunoravičius. – as the worst Holocaust revisionists in the world, Lithuania has raised historical revisionism and disrespect of the victims to an art form. Here they point fingers at others for having learned the Holocaust distortion lessons Lithuania has taught. They clearly have no regard for their own allies in OSCE as they just lie to them.

He also noted that the ongoing Russia’s war against Ukraine and atrocity crimes Russia is committing made it painfully clear that hatred and cruelty does not disappear anywhere by itself. – Holocaust denial, revision, inversion, distortion and supremacy ARE antisemitism. Lithuania is an antisemitic state. Hatred and cruelty are features of Lithuanian society. Arvydas is pointing a finger at Russia for skills they exercise in abundance. Hypocrisy.

Underscoring the need for all countries to do their utmost to fight all forms of antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion, Ambassador A. Daunoravičius reviewed Lithuania’s achievements in this regard. – As the worst Holocaust revisionists in the world, Lithuania has no standing to point a finger at anyone for attempting to replicates Lithuania’s master class in fraud. Hypocrisy.

Attention was drawn to steps taken by the Lithuanian Government to renew educational curricula of the history of the Holocaust to promote critical thinking and a more accurate understanding of the consequences of antisemitism. – Lithuania’s history policy is fraud. Lithuania has no standing to tell anyone what to teach.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) recommendations played an important role in developing this new curricula. – The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has itself pointed out Lithuania’s Holocaust revisionism. The Lithuanian Government ignored it. Invoking IHRA for purposes of propaganda is breathtaking in its dishonesty and audacity.

Ambassador also announced the news that two new museums devoted to the preservation of the historical memory and heritage of the Lithuania’s Jews are being planned. – which museums are these and were they funded by the Lithuanian government? Or, is the government claiming credit for the work of others?

Ambassador Daunoravičius shared information about measures taken by Lithuania to restore historical justice. – Truth is the basis of justice. In the absence of truth, justice is not possible. Lithuania does not tolerate Holocaust truth.

He noted the recent amendments of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Good Will Compensation for the Immovable Property of Jewish Religious Communities to provide a monetary compensation for the private realty of Lithuanian Jews that was nationalized or illegally expropriated by the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes. – The “compensation” amounts to $16.80 per murdered Jew, per year for a few years. To whom does this money go? They only refer to property expropriated by Nazis and Soviets, they make no mention of property stolen by Lithuanians. This is a deliberate omission designed to distract from the facts.

Arvydas and his cronies have no more connection to truth than Putin does to human rights. The breadth of dishonesty in this statement is amazing.

Vilnius 700 years

Screenshot from Facebook

Lithuania recently celebrated the 700^th anniversary of Vilnius. The basis for the celebration was King Gediminas’s invitation to Jews, to settle in Lithuania in a multinational, integrated society. Unmentioned, was the repudiation of that invitation to Jews and the slaughter of the Jews – as if it hadn’t happened. From this celebration, I learned that inconvenient facts can just be omitted, just like a magic eraser!. The murder of 220,000 Jews was not significant enough to be relevant to Lithuania. Their hero worshiping of Kazys Skirpa, who overturned Gediminas’s invitation did not warrant mention or attention either.

I also learned that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not as a result of Russia imploding. It was not a result of Russia losing the Cold War to America. Their stated reason that the Soviet Union collapsed, was that Lithuania destroyed the Soviet Union. Contemptible, self aggrandizing hyperbole.

January 13, 1991

The January Events (Lithuanian: Sausio įvykiai) were a series of violent confrontations between the civilian population of Lithuania, supporting independence, and the Soviet Armed Forces. The events took place between 11 and 13 January 1991, after the restoration of independence by Lithuania. As a result of the Soviet military actions, 14 civilians were killed and over 140 were injured.

The historian Algimantas Kasperavičius speaking on the anniversary this year of the January 13, 1991, events in Vilnius said: “Although Lithuania succeeded from 1988 to 1991 in achieving independence almost without war, Lithuania’s political elite attempted to make up such a war, and passed out awards to people for fighting in battles which in reality never happened.”

To be sure, I do not care what glorious history Lithuania invents to justify their nation building efforts. I care only that they tell the truth about who murdered the Jews of Lithuania. My agenda in exposing these inventions of history is simply to show the level of dishonesty by Lithuania, and to help outsiders understand how and why they tell so many lies about the Holocaust.

Algimantas Kasperavičius

Kasperavičius’s pronouncements did not apparently elicit any further national comment or discussion, it was as if every Lithuanian was already familiar with that truth.

It seems one group of Lithuanians agree with him, the others chose silence. They are silent because they fear any discussion could lay waste to the narrative developed over three decades of battles for the existence of the state, and topple it like a house of cards. Silence is the Lithuanian government’s favorite tactic in the face of truth. They were silent when the US Congress exposed their historical fraud about the Provisional Government, they are silent in the face of the children’s screams from their death pit in J’Accuse!

It was the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic which declared independence in 1990. Lithuanian independence was achieved exactly because violent confrontations were avoided, and because it was done almost exclusively peacefully. There was little individual heroism involved. The Soviet Union imploded from within, and breakaway republics, such as Lithuania, were able to claim independence.

Lithuania’s claim that they destroyed the Soviet Union takes exaggeration into the realm of utter absurdity. Gorbachov weakened the Soviet Union from within until Yeltsin dissolved it. If there was anyone that destroyed the Soviet Union, it was President Reagan of USA. Lithuania’s claim that they “destroyed” the Soviet Union negates claims by Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, and others, because, it means – if Lithuania destroyed the Soviet Union, the others did nothing, and if the others did act, then Lithuania’s statement that it was them who destroyed the Soviet Union is a lie. This lie is typical of Lithuania where they claim ownership of the work of others, and blame Nazis and Soviets for their own murder of Jews.

Partisans

Due to the apparent necessity to connect Partisans with the movement for Lithuanian independence and the independence proclaimed in 1990, the history of the partisans was vastly altered. In order to enhance the appearance of the Lithuanian independence movement, two leaders of that movement were fashioned “presidents” of Lithuania.

The concept of the partisan resistance was heavily redacted in order to conform to Lithuanian historical commemoration politics. Partisans from 1941 underwent the greatest transformation.

After reinvention by the counterfeiters of history (Lithuanian government historians), their so-called June Uprising–which only lasted from June 23 to June 28, 1941,–now has nothing in common with the Holocaust, nor with the Lithuanian Provisional Government. A total and complete lie.

Lithuania offers no explanation as to why some units of the “insurgents” in this “Uprising” were only formed after the Nazis had arrived, nor why they were used against remaining Red Army soldiers and Jews. Nor is there any discussion about how the Lithuanian units disarmed and arrested Jews, and turned them over to the Nazis, before they allegedly surrendered to the Nazis themselves.

These “historians” scramble for falsified explanations, claiming a handful of the Lithuanian “insurgents” sullied their hands, or, in the case of the pogroms in Kaunas, that the groups who took part, weren’t even insurgents at all. They have no use for facts when fiction appears better.

Adolph Ramanauskas

One of the post-war partisan leaders, Adolfas Ramanauskas, became the leader of a partisan unit in Druskininkai on June 23, 1941, after Germans occupied the city. In his memoirs and on his Service to the Homeland military service page, Ramanauskas boasted he commanded a partisan unit until August of 1941 which was later renamed Apsauga [Security]. “Apsauga” is an abbreviation of the title given to the Nazi police battalions, the “Tautinė darbo apsauga,” or TDA [National Labor Security]. After Ramanauskas had fallen into the hands of Soviet interrogators, he gave a very different version of events, recorded in interrogation records. He said he only commanded the unit for two weeks. After that, he was in charge of security for the property of the Lithuanian resort town.

Lithuania’s government historians “believe” the version recorded in the protocols of the post-war Soviet interrogators. This notwithstanding the clear contradictions to Ramanauskas’s version of events from other witnesses in that very same case-file. Lithuanian “reality” after all, is whatever fantasy they have and rewrite as the official, enforced narrative.

The factual explanation of Ramanauskas’s record is very simple. In mid-July in Druskininkai, 28 people accused of being Communists were executed by firing squad and an operation to publicly humiliate and abuse Jews was carried out. The local Jews were sent into an ersatz ghetto. The partisans of the “Apsauga” force carried out these operations. The possibility these operations were carried out without one of the unit’s commanders being present is about zero (but, please – do not allow facts to intrude on Lithuania’s official history).

If we take this limited section of the Soviet case-file against Ramanauskas, according to which he was simply boasting and lied to the partisans in writing his memoirs and filling out his military service card, we can avoid his connection to the Holocaust. They simply ignore his possible predilection for boasting of imaginary events.

The file does contain “dangerous passages”. The criminal case against Algirdas Urbonas detailing his conviction immediately post-war is missing from the Lithuanian Special Archive where most KGB documents are conserved.

Ramanauskas’s own admissions regarding that summer in Druskininkai was sufficient for the town of New Britain, Connecticut, to decline erecting a statue to Ramanauskas being pushed on them by Lithuania. Americans didn’t want anything to do with this alleged Lithuanian hero of such dubious repute.

Ramanauskas certainly isn’t the only Lithuanian partisan with such a controversial biography. The Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, which is abbreviated to “Genocide Center”, is funded from the Lithuanian state budget and is responsible for a large number of the false biographies of Lithuanian partisans and their heroization. Lithuania makes a practice of glossing over inconvenient controversies and many of the heroes they magically create are awarded the status of Volunteer Soldier, which entails financial rewards and honor.

Much of Lithuanian history is imaginative fables, sold to their own population for nation building and to exculpate them for murdering Jews.

Insurgents

It’s not clear what the Lithuanian “insurgents” actually did. Did they raise the Lithuanian flag in front of institutions abandoned by the Soviets? Did they arrange for ceremonies to greet the invading German “liberators” with flowers, as many of them had done previously for their Soviet “liberators?”

Another partisan commander, “president” Jonas Žemaitis admits on his military service page having given speeches at Soviet meetings. Although there were tens and more like hundreds of people who made a name for themselves in Soviet Lithuania, and who became important figures in the “June Uprising” of 1941, Lithuania now blamed “The Jews”. And not just blamed them, but murdered them including babies, the elderly and the infirm. After all, the Lithuanian Activist Front promised them they could wash away their sins by murdering Jews.

In military terms the Lithuanian insurgents didn’t achieve any real victories. Some “historians” try to say they were tasked with causing panic behind Soviet lines, but actually it’s almost impossible to deny the panic arose because of the especially rapid attack by the German military. We find it difficult to say that raising the Lithuanian flag in front of buildings already abandoned by the Soviets is really an uprising. Even where actual fighting occurred, any “victories” by the Lithuanian insurgents were the result of the German military appearing there. Lithuanians just mostly shot fleeing Soviet soldiers in the back and just call it an “uprising”. The fiction sounds glorious, no matter what the reality was.

Another controversy is the Lithuanian Provisional Government. Was it independent? When Germans refused to recognize it, they simply dissolved themselves, and said nothing at all when the Germans set up their “civilian administration.” Nazis just used their existing Lithuanian administration and staff to administer and control the genocide.

In a memorandum, the armed and political force of the Lithuanian Activist Front grumbled that Germans considered Lithuania a former country, and came to terms with the new order introduced by the Germans. The bureaucracy formed by the Lithuanian Provisional Government went over to serve the Nazi side and the exiting Lithuanian Government left behind a document for the antisemites, “Regulations on the Situation of the Jews.” The police battalions formed by this alleged Government started carrying out the Holocaust in Lithuania even before the Government dissolved itself.

Lithuanian historians of the Genocide Center manufacture an anti Nazi nature for Lithuania. Forgetting of course that this happened only after Lithuanians had murdered most of their Jews, and that Germany was not going to reward them for these murders by giving them a state of their own. Is it possible for Lithuania to be this nauseatingly dishonest?

Kaunas prison warden Ignas Vylius was responsible for the mass murder of over 10,000 Jews. Vylius was in charge of the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. He is presented in Lithuanian Wikipedia as “an organizer and member of the … anti-Soviet, anti-Semitic and anti-Nazi resistance.”

Just as Jonas Noreika has been officially and legally rewritten as a rescuer of Jews in Lithuania, so has Vylius! On June 30, 1941, he allegedly released 30 Jews from the Kaunas prison. (These Jews were ordered released by Kaunas military Commander Bobelis as they had proven records they were volunteer soldiers for Lithuania in 1918). There is not even a mention of the tens of thousands of Jews murdered at the prison under Vylius’s control; releasing thirty on orders makes him a rescuer by Lithuanian standards! Their history takes dishonesty to levels unknown in the world.

Lithuanian Provisional Government

The Lithuanian Provisional Government would be found guilty of war crimes in its entirety by the Nuremberg Tribunal for their crimes against Jews.

The Provisional Government’s police battalions were incorporated under the jurisdiction of the Nazi SS by the end of August, 1941. The Lithuanian government abrogates responsibility because the command was shifted to the SS, even though it was the same murders doing the murdering. Just the guy at the top was changed. This gives Lithuanian “historians” license to shift all blame for their crimes. An outrageous twisting of facts.

The Lithuanian village self-defense forces and local select teams fighting the pro-Soviet and Polish partisans, also posed real danger to the Jews seeking to survive and others hiding from the Nazis, i.e., they contributed directly and indirectly to the Holocaust. Jews simply had no refuge. Only 0.04% of Lithuanians are certified as rescuers.

Several thousand Lithuanian Jews, mainly escaped prisoners from the ghettos in Kaunas and Vilnius, found refuge with Soviet partisans.

The post-war history of the partisans has also been heavily edited. It mainly speaks to self-sacrifice, betrayal, Soviet deceit and brutality. There is almost nothing said about the brutality of the death sentences doled out by the military commissions of the partisans on the battlefield to children aged 5 and 7. There isn’t even a guestimate of how many children 14 and under received death sentences from the Lithuanian partisans. There is no mention of the so-called St. Bartholomew’s Nights when the partisans carried out executions of dozens of people at a time on separate dates.

The Merkys team alone under Ramanauskas’s command issued and carried out 70 death sentences on June 13, 1946, and reported that they had carried out 80% of the executions they had planned. The Merkys unit wasn’t the only one in the Dainava partisan military district, and there were many such partisan military districts throughout Lithuania.

The state’s narrative fails even to mention the mass murders of Jews, the murder of rescuers of Jews and the murder of Roma in the post-war period. These murder victims are just completely ignored by the official government “historians”. Their history is as much fraud by omission as it is fraud by commission.

Past, present and future lies

Lithuanian government “historians” depended on the minuscule number of Survivors being too exhausted and too scared to testify, as to what they experienced and witnessed. Lithuania depended upon an entire foreign ministry to go out into the Jewish world and try to misinform unsuspecting Jews into helping them spread their falsifications, distortions and distractions. They almost succeeded. Almost.

There were so few Survivors, that Lithuania nearly managed to even rewrite pre-Holocaust history. That the Lithuanian Businessmen’s Association had urged government restrictions on Jews and boycotted Jewish businesses. That Darius and Girenas threw tar at Jewish businesses and were antisemites. That Lithuanian clergy instigated antisemitism at the basest levels of society. Lithuanians blamed every societal ill on Jews and practiced apartheid against Jews.

Lithuania is built on lies, and sustained by lies.

I don’t care

I do not care what fantasy world Lithuania lives in about their own history, and teaches to their own population. The can lie to their hearts content and invent whatever grandiose lies they wish. I DO NOT CARE. I do care what tropes they tell about Jews, and the lies they tell about who murdered their Jews. I will not stand by as they falsify history about their Jewish victims. Neither should anyone else.

For most Jews – we already know. Lithuanians with dignity should be the most outraged of all. After all, this is done in their name.

This article was co-authored by Grant Gochin and Evaldas Balčiūnas.