Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Processo per i partigiani ebrei in Lituania

http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m14&SecId=14&AId=60542&ATypeId=1
The Holocaust survivors facing war-crimes trials
06/06/2008
By Dana Gloger, Jewish Chronicles
Elderly Jews say they are outraged that Lithuania is pursuing them over 
their
wartime role as anti-Nazi partisans
Fania
Branstovsky was just 20 when she joined the Jewish partisan movement
fighting the Nazis in her home country of Lithuania. In the Vilnius
ghetto, she and her fellow partisans carried out attacks against the
occupying German forces. By the end of the war, almost her entire
family — more than 50 people –— had perished at the hands of the Nazis.
Yet now, over 60 years later, she is the one being branded unpatriotic,
and is reportedly under investigation by Lithuanian authorities for
alleged war crimes.
National and local newspapers and television
stations are referring to the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, who now
works as a librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, as a murderer
and a terrorist. Earlier this year, the Vilnius-based newspaper
Lietuvos Aidas called for her to be put on trial. The allegation
levelled against her is that during her time as a partisan, she
committed crimes against Lithuanians. But she strongly denies that she
and her partisan colleagues ever targeted groups of local people.
“It’s
very upsetting and shocking,” says Branstovsky, a mother of two, with
six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “We fought against the
powers of the Nazis. Not against the locals. The Nazis wanted to
annihilate all Jews and all people who loved freedom, and I joined the
underground partisan organisation in September 1943 to defend myself
and my people. It was a matter of honour.”
Even with a possible
war-crimes prosecution hanging over her, she has no regrets. “I didn’t
want all Jewish people to die with no resistance. I feel very proud and
I’m very glad that I had the opportunity to do something for honour and
humanity.”
She vows that the prospect of being put on trial for
war crimes will not drive her out of her country. “I’m very patriotic.
I was born here and have always lived here. Of course I am worried, but
I am not planning to leave because of this. By doing this they want to
rewrite history.”
Branstovsky is not the only Holocaust
survivor being pursued by the Lithuanian authorities. Yitzhak Arad, a
historian and former chairman of Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem,
is also being investigated over similar alleged crimes.
Arad
joined the partisan movement in the Vilnius ghetto during the war. His
parents had already been taken by the Nazis two years earlier,
eventually dying in Warsaw. So the teenage Arad decided to try to make
it alone. “The night before we had to go to the ghetto, I escaped to
Belorussia [then part of the Soviet Union, now Belarus],” he recalls.
“In doing that, I escaped the killings. Forty members of my family were
killed as well as many people from my village.”
He returned to
Vilnius as a member of the pro-Soviet partisan movement, whose main
activity was sabotaging German trains. Having fought so hard to survive
the Nazi killings, Arad, who settled in Israel after the war, says he
is “upset and disappointed” at being branded a war criminal.
“In
doing this they are trying to rewrite history and to turn the murderers
of thousands of Jews into heroes and the few survivors into criminals,”
he says.
Although he has had no formal confirmation from the
authorities that they are looking into his partisan activities, or that
a prosecution is planned, he says he has heard through other channels
that a group of anti-Soviets in the country filed a complaint against
him to Lithuanian prosecutors. This led to an investigation being
launched. The local media have also reported that an investigation is
under way, accusing both Arad and Branstovsky of massacring civilians
in the village of Kaniukai.
The prospect of standing trial has,
naturally enough, left Arad reluctant to return to his home town. “I
have not been back for two years, and I’m not planning on going back
now,” he says.
If trials do go ahead, it seems that a third
Jewish partisan could be the primary witness for the prosecution.
Rachel Margolis, founder of Vilnius’s Jewish museum, has written a
memoir recounting her escape from the ghetto and her time as a
partisan. Extracts from her book, she fears, could be used as evidence
by prosecutors.
Margolis, who lost her family in the Holocaust
and now lives in Israel, was unavailable to talk to the JC. But
according to Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem office of the
Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an investigator was sent to the address which
she uses in Lithuania. He says the investigator interviewed Rachel
Konstanian, the director of the Vilnius Jewish Museum, and told her
that he was looking for Margolis in order to question her regarding an
investigation into Fania Branstovsky.
Margolis’s cousin, Budd
Margolis, who lives in London, fears that the stress of going through a
trial could prove life-threatening to Holocaust survivors now in their
eighties. “This is very shocking and upsetting,” he says. “My cousin,
as well as the other two people involved, are all quite elderly now,
and it’s very unfortunate that they have to deal with this at this
stage of their lives. It’s terribly unjust.”
He adds that his cousin is now too scared to return to Lithuania. “She is
worried she may get arrested.”
Rachel
Margolis’s memoir, which has been published in Lithuania, contains a
description of how a group of partisans, including Fania Branstovsky,
attacked a Nazi garrison in the village of “Kanyuki”. She writes: “The
partisans had surrounded the garrison, but the Nazis were exceptionally
well armed and beat off all attacks. They broke the flanks of the
Jewish detachments, and the partisans withdrew precipitously. Then
Magid jumped up on a rock and yelled: ‘We are Jews. We will show them
what we are capable of. Forward, comrades!’ This sobered the men up;
they ran back and won.”
A willingness to prosecute alleged war
criminals is something not often displayed by the Lithuanian
authorities. Even though around 212,000 of its Jews were killed, the
Baltic country has only ever brought three of its citizens to trial
over war crimes, two of whom — Kazys Gimzauskas and Algimantas Dailide
— were convicted, but were excused imprisonment, in Gimzauskas’s case
because of illness, in Dailide’s because of advanced age. Dailide was
85, a year younger than Fania Branstovsky is now.
According to
the Lithuania embassy in London, there are currently no plans to
prosecute Branstovsky. In an emailed statement, Minister Counsellor,
Deputy Head of Mission Jonas Grinevicius said: “There is no lawsuit
against Mrs Branstovsky and there are no charges by the Prosecution
General against Mrs Branstovsky, nor there is any other legal action
against Mrs Branstovsky initiated. Mrs Branstovsky is only asked to
appear in the court hearings as a witness in the case of the massacre
by Soviet partisans of peaceful inhabitants of Kaniukai village in
Salcininkai district. The killing of 38 Kaniukai inhabitants occurred
in January 1944, it was committed by 120-150 Soviet partisans.”
Lithuanian
denials do not impress Efraim Zuroff. He has written a strongly worded
letter to Asta Skaisgiryté–Liauskienè, the Lithuanian ambassador in
Israel. In it he accuses the Lithuanian authorities of “launching a
campaign to discredit Jewish resistance fighters by falsely accusing
them of war crimes in order to deflect attention from widespread
Lithuanian participation in the mass murder of Jews during the
Holocaust”.
He tells the JC that this is a “malicious campaign
against the innocent heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance. We are hoping
the investigations will be dropped,” he says.
And so are Fania Branstovsky, Yitzhak Arad and Rachel Margolis.
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m14&SecId=14&AId=60542&ATypeId=1
ben svegliato...sono anni che i plonkati da te ne parlano del
neonazismo delle repubbliche baltiche che celebra i "partigiani"
antisovietici, ss incluse, come eroi nazionali e quindi demonizza i
partigiani antinazi come nemici dello stato...

 06/06/2008
Qui c'e da spezzare una lancia a favore della Lituania:  A iniziare
questa "moda" non sono stati affatto loro, ma noi Italiani:  E' stata
l'Italia a chiedere per prima a Slovenia e Croazia di estradare
partigiani Antifascisti accusati di "crimini di guerra", cioe' di aver
punito (cosa che noi non abbiamo fatto) nazifascisti Italiani dopo la
liberazione dell'Istria.
Alla fine degli anni '90, anni prima della Lituania.
L'Italia, nei confronti degli Sloveni, fece efferratezze del tutto
paragonabili alle persecuzioni nei confronti degli Ebrei Lituani.
Dopo la guerra, la Yugoslavia chiese che si processasse una lunga
lista di criminali (a cominciare da Badoglio).  Non fu processato
nessuno.
Ora, se un paese cosi' pretende di processare partigiani per presunti
"crimini" commessi contro i fascisti, perche' mai stupirsi se in
Lituania c'e gente che voglia fare lo stesso con i *loro* partigiani?
E' un po' come Ahmadinejad.  Il suo revisionismo e' davvero piu'
ributtante dei Gianpaolo Pansa di turno?    Se diamo un'alone di
rispettabilita' a gente che dice che fra repubblichini e partigiani
tanta differenza non c'era, perche' stupirsi se qualche politicante di
turno, quando gli conviene,
fa gli stessi ragionamenti con Auschwitz e gli alleati?
Prima di andare a giudicare i Lituani o Iraniani, converrebbe
guardarci allo specchio.
E vedere come la *nostra* memoria storica sia ogni giorno piu
infangata.
GT

 infangata.
in primis da chi parla a vanvera di comunisti e fascisti tutti uguali,
facendo oggettivamente il gioco delle belve fasciste

 Due rossobruni
eccolo lì, lo sdoganatore delle SS baltiche

 Pezzo di merda razzista.
ma fa zitto, slavofobo del cazzo

 Qui c'e da spezzare una lancia a favore della Lituania: 
[cut]
Chissà perché non mi stupisco.
MMAX
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 Chissà perché non mi stupisco.
Del tentativo di estradare in Italia tre partigiani Sloveni per
processarli di "crimini di guerra" commessi in Istria contro fascisti
che ne pensi?

 antisemita.
ma niente affatto, dice semplicemente che a cercare di fare processi
ai partigiani abbiamo cominciato noi, e questa è una vergogna

che ne pensi?
Penso che non sia neanche oggetto di discussione.
MMAX
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 Penso che non sia neanche oggetto di discussione.
No? La Lituania sta facendo con i partigiani Ebrei quello che ha
tentato di fare l'Italia con i partigiani Slavi.
Prima di criticare gli altri, e' bene fare pulizia in casa nostra.
GT

 Prima di criticare gli altri
Chissà perché non mi stupisco [cit]
Tb

Prima di criticare gli altri, e' bene fare pulizia in casa nostra.
Segui il gruppo, ne ho parlato.
Ah..curati Giorgino tutta sta bile ti fa male.
MMAX
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 Con la lacrima da coccodrillo per l'olocausto del passato.
veramente quello che ha difeso più volte le parade delle SS baltiche
sei tu....

 06/06/2008

parlane con quel verme di letame del tuo amichetto pinteruccio  (ma anche
con i suoi ridicoli scagnozzi orso e amalric). 
Lui e' quello che faceva il filosofo verso la merda baltica che
collaborava con i nazisti. Si vede da cosa proviene...
-- 
visitate 
http://www.comunisti-italiani.it/frames/index.htm
 
http://www.larinascita.org
http://www.italia-cuba.it/associazione/associazione.htm
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
http://www.newsland.it/news
 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it


se non sono ebrei alla MerdaMax non frega nulla.

 Provalo.
LOL...ecco perchè fai scomparire i tuoi messaggi....

 veramente
Già, proprio vero.
Tb

che ne pensi?
io penso che tu sia un povero imbecille...