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The official website of Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love & Partisan Resistance published by St. Martin's Press and maintained by author Michael Bart.
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UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH
A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance
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(Vilna) Vilnius, Lithuania

NEWS ARCHIVE: The government of Lithuanian began an anti-Semitic campaign to prosecute former Jewish resistance fighters who escaped the final liquidations of the Vilna ghetto and others ghettos in Lithuania, and joined in the fight against Hitlerism. These aging Holocaust survivors and heroes of the resistance movement were being judicially harassed by Lithuanian prosecutors. In May 2008, the Lithuanian Jewish community issued a statement that expressed their deep concern regarding instances of anti-Semitism and xenophobia aimed at Jews and other ethnic groups in Lithuania. In July 2008, an open letter from the Jewish community of Lithuania was issued. On August 1, 2008 a letter was sent from members of the United States Congress addressed to Lithuanian Prime Minister Kirkilas to express their mounting concerns.

On Sunday morning August 10th, Simon Gurevich (Gurevicius) Executive Director of the Jewish community of Lithuania reported there were Swastikas etc on the doors and windows of the Jewish Community Center in Vilnius, Lithuania located at Pylimo 4, Vilnius.

These documents are posted here to promote awareness of the issues and as an expression of support from THE BART FAMILY for the Jewish resistance fighters, and the Lithuanian Jewish community.

Related Links:

  • The European Jewish Congress: For additional web-posts regarding Lithuania.


  • San Diego Union-Tribune: Nazi Hunters give Holocaust Museum Papers

    Dec. 21, 2008: Associated Press and Cox News Service

    • Washington--The paper had yellowed, its edges frayed. But it clearly bore the signature of Lithuanian policeman Aleksandras Lileikis, ordering a Jewish woman and her 6-year-old daughter to be shot in a Nazi death pit in 1941...

    In Lileikis' case, the Massachusetts resident initially denied being part of the Nazi-allied Lithuanian security police's "mobile killing units" that rounded up Jews and brought them to forest pits where their bodies were left after being shot. Read more...

  • Jewish Currents.org: Analyzing Lithuanian Anti-Semitism The 'Double Genocide' Theory Refuses to Quit

    Nov. 2008: A must read article!

    • Something is seriously wrong in Lithuania when it comes to Holocaust education and historical sensibility. This becomes most obvious on Fridays and weekends in the park that fronts the Green House — which is hidden in an alley, around a curve, up a hill behind apartment houses, with only a small blue-and-white sign measuring less than a foot across and six inches high. Local skinheads, mostly from the apartment buildings around the museum, gather in that park, which is dedicated, ironically enough, to Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who rescued thousands of Jews in Kaunas. Read more...

  • Jewish Currents.org: 'Investigating' Jewish Partisans in Lithuania. The Protest of a Veteran Jewish Partisan.

    Sept. 2008: A must read article!

    • Jews did not join the partisans as a normal act of choice. We were forced to fight the Nazis to save ourselves from extermination. We took the gun in our hands in a desperate situation, when our parents, brothers and sisters were murdered, when children were grabbed from their mothers and sent to their gruesome death. We fought in order to survive; we fought against fascism, which was our enemy, the enemy of all democratic forces and the enemy of Lithuania. Read more...

  • Economist.com (UK): Lithuania must stop blaming the victims

    Aug 21, 2008

    • IS LITHUANIA really persecuting Holocaust survivors as if they were war criminals? Not quite, but the story is still troubling. It starts with the Nazi occupation of Lithuania when the Germans, with local help, were murdering Jews (more than 200,000 Jews perished, around 95% of the pre-war population). The Nazis' main opponent was the Soviet Union, so Jews' only chance of survival was to fight alongside Soviet-backed partisan groups, who were fighting both against Hitler and to restore communist rule in Lithuania. Read more...

  • Jerusalem Post: Yad Vashem blasts Lithuania for revisionism

    Aug 11, 2008

    • Yad Vashem is increasingly concerned over growing Holocaust revisionism and anti-Semitism in Lithuania, the Holocaust Memorial announced Monday. Read more...

  • BBC News Channel: Reopening Lithuania's old wounds

    July 20, 2008

    • By Tim Whewell BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents - A judicial inquiry into the wartime activities of Jewish anti-Nazi resistance fighters in Lithuania has led to accusations that the small Baltic state is trying to distort the history of World War II. Read more...

    Tim Whewell's BBC Radio 4 documentary, "Lithuania: The Battle for Memory," click here to listen >>



    Tim Whewell's BBC Radio 4 documentary, "Lithuania: The Battle for Memory" will be reaired this evening (Monday 21 July) at 8:30 PM British time (3:30 US Eastern).

  • Washington Times: MARIASCHIN: Lithuania's new Jewish concerns

    July 20, 2008

    • Commentary - Lithuania, a NATO ally with a Jewish history in turn glorious and tragic, has once again become a cause for Jewish concern more than 60 years after the Holocaust...Four problems, in particular, require immediate action: Read more...

  • Baltic Times, Latvia: Jewish community betrayed

    July 09, 2008

    • VILNIUS - Jewish community leaders on two continents have united to emphatically condemn the Lithuanian government for reneging on its promise to restore stolen Jewish property and for pandering to anti-Semites in Lithuania. Jewish leaders claim that the Lithuania authorities promised to return property stolen from murdered Jews during World War II in return for Jewish support for Lithuania's EU and NATO membership efforts. Jewish leaders say that since gaining membership, Lithuania has broken its promise. Read more...

  • Baltic News Service: Press release on court's decison re: Dailide

    July 04, 2008

    • VILNIUS, Jul 04, BNS - The Lithuanian Court of Appeals ruled Friday to keep valid Vilnius district court's ruling pronounced two years back, declaring Algimantas Mykolas Dailide - now a senior citizen - who partook in crimes against Jews, not dangerous to society and pardoning him from a jail sentence. Read more...

  • The World Jewish Congress: Jewish organizations urge Lithuania to speed up restitution

    July 02, 2008

    • The World Jewish Congress has called on the Lithuanian government to urgently address the negative climate in the country vis-a-vis members of its Jewish community and to speedily enact legislation allowing for the restitution of properties seized under the Nazi occupation. At a meeting in New York attended by several leaders of Jewish organizations, WJC secretary-general Michael Schneider told Lithuanian prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas: "The World Jewish Restitution Organization began its negotiations with your government six years ago. Until today, no piece of legislation has even been sent to the Lithuanian parliament for deliberation." Read more...

  • The Guardian (UK): In the Jerusalem of the North, the Jewish story is forgotten

    June 20, 2008

    • Three times as many people died in Lithuania under the Nazis than the Soviets, but the state is myopic about the past. Read more...

  • YIVO News: Lithuanian Prime Minister Visits YIVO

    June 30, 2008

    • NEW YORK, June 2008 - As part of his recent trip to the United States, Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas of Lithuania visited YIVO on June 30, 2008. He was given a tour of YIVO's Rare Book Room and Archives, followed by a discussion that touched on YIVO-owned Hebrew- and Yiddish-language books, rediscovered in 1989, that are now housed in the Bibliographical Center of the Lithuanian National Library. Read more...

  • American Jewish Committee: U.S. Jewish Leaders Press Lithuanian Prime Minister to Resolve Property Restitution

    June 30, 2008

    • New York - The American Jewish Committee (AJC), joined by the leaders of other U.S.-based Jewish organizations, today pressed Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas and his government to exert the political will to pass legislation that will finally resolve the matter of Jewish communal property restitution. Read more...

  • Haaretz.com: Jerusalem to honor WWII Jewish partisans with new monument

    April 30, 2008

    • Jerusalem, April 30, Haaretz - A memorial to the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the Nazis in World War II is to be erected before the end of the year at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem...According to estimates, about 10,000 Jews fought behind German lines in occupied Europe. Read more...


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