Dovid Katz
Image by richard schofield
Image by richard schofield
Occasionally prone to hyperbole, Katz, who divides his time between Lithuania and the United Kingdom, has spent years fighting what he perceives to be Lithuanian doublespeak. On the one hand, the Baltic nation has launched pro-Jewish initiatives, such as making 2011 the “Year of Remembrance for Holocaust
Victims.” On the other hand, Katz argues, it has whitewashed Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust while agitating to equate crimes committed by Soviets in the Baltics with Nazi atrocities.
YIVO, which was founded in 1925 in Vilna, is intimately tied up with this history. A portion of its treasured archive was hidden from the Nazis and then from the Soviets until just before the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the Lithuanian government claims ownership of that collection. For YIVO’s executive director, Jonathan Brent, establishing a room at the Lithuanian National Library is a pragmatic solution to a decades-long quandary. For Katz, who has led a months-long campaign against the move, leaving the archive in Vilna is nothing short of capitulation.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Special Report Trump and Jews: The first 100 days
-
News These are the most influential Jews in Trump’s first 100 days
-
News Why Zohran Mamdani believes he’ll win over Jewish voters, as Israel critic surges to second behind Cuomo in NYC mayoral race
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The secret cost of Israel’s wars ravaged my family. It’s only getting worse
-
Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.