Lithuanians Scrap Event for Quisling Leader
The Lithuanian University in Kaunas on Tuesday decided to cancel a commemorative conference planned for the “prime minister” of Lithuania’s 1941 Nazi puppet government.
In a controversial move, causing anguish among Holocaust survivors, Lithuania’s Jewish community and the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, the remains of Juozas Brazaitis Ambrazevicius, who died almost 40 years ago in the United States, will be reinterred from Connecticut to the Church of the Resurrection in Kaunas. En route, he will be honored in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in a ceremony slated for Thursday.
A memorial conference in the Vytautas Magnus University of Kaunas was originally scheduled for Saturday.
Following a Haaretz report, the university’s rector and his deputy had decided to call off the event, explaining they wish to “save the honor” of the institution. In a letter addressed to Lithuanian parliament, Rector Prof. Zigmas Lydeka and Vice Rector Prof. Aukse Balcytiene wrote that political and memorial events should take place in the parliament, and not on university grounds.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
