Thursday, March 05, 2020
Leader of Anti-Semites: Kazys Skirpa of Lithuania
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| Kazys Skirpa February 18, 1895-August 18, 1979 He died at age 84 in Washington, DC. USA. Kazys Škirpa was a Lithuanian military officer and diplomat. He is best known as the founder of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and his involvement in the attempt to establish Lithuanian independence in June 1941. His fault was to be an anti-Semite. |
Nathan Abraham Goldfus, born 1871 in Telsiai, Lithuania
may have encountered which led him to get out of Lithuania and immigrate to the USA. Kazys's parents were living in an anti-Semite era as well. Nathan was in Boise, Idaho in 1905 marrying my grandmother, Zlata Jermulowske of Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania /Poland. Nathan had left Lithuania and had gone to Dublin, Ireland, then Canada and finally the USA.
1794 Lithuania was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
1795 -After this year Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire
1914-1918 WWI: During World War I he was mobilized into the Russian army and tried to form Lithuanian detachments in Petrograd.
1917: Germany conceived the geopolitical strategy of Mitteleuropa, a regional network of puppet states that would serve as a buffer zone. The Germans allowed the organisation of the Vilnius Conference, hoping that it would proclaim that the Lithuanian nation wanted to detach itself from Russia and establish a "closer relationship" with Germany. In September 1917, the Conference elected a twenty-member Council of Lithuania and empowered it to negotiate Lithuanian independence with the Germans.
1918: Lithuania declared her independence: He returned and volunteered during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. The Council was unable to form a government, police, or other state institutions due to the continued presence of German troops.
1920: A member of the Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania. After that he decided to pursue a military education in Institute of Technology in Zurich, Higher Military School in Kaunas, and Royal Military Academy (Belgium).
1925: He graduated and worked as chief of the General Staff, but was forced to resign after the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état,
1926: Lithuanian coup d'etat: (it is an illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power by a dictator, the military, or a political faction.) He refused and tried to gather a military force to protect the government.
1926-1927: When it was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Following a brief occupation by Nazi Germany after the Nazis waged war on the Soviet Union, Lithuania was again absorbed into the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years.
1927-1930: Skirpa was later serving as a Lithuanian representative to Germany
1937: League of Nations representative from Lithuania
1938: representative to Poland,
1938-1941: representative to Germany; organizer of Lithuania’s anti-Soviet rebellion and Prime Minister of Lithuania’s Provisional Government in 1941
1940: He established the Lithuanian Activist Front in Berlin, an umbrella organization representing Lithuanian political parties, which expressed support for the Third Reich and incited violence against Lithuanian Jewry. He argued for ethnic cleansing-to get rid of the Jews.
1949: In 1949, he emigrated to the United States. He worked at the Library of Congress.
1975: In 1975 his memoir book about the 1941 independence movement was published.
1979: He died in Washington DC. Originally interred in Washington, D.C.,
1995: In June his remains were returned to Kaunas , where he was reburied in Petrašiūnai Cemetery. His re-burial was attended by then Lithuanian Defense Minister Linas Linkevičius.
1990–1991, Lithuania restored its sovereignty with the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania. Lithuania joined the NATO alliance in 2004 and the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004.
2019: Vilnius City Council decided to rename Skirpa Street:
Jerusalem –
The Simon Wiesenthal Center today welcomed yesterday's decision by the
Vilnius (Vilna) city council to rename a small street in the center of the city
which had been named for controversial Lithuanian diplomat Kazys Škirpa, due
to his anti-Semitic opinions and actions. The motion passed by a vote of 21-16
and was harshly criticized by right-wing nationalists.
In a statement issued here today by its director of Eastern European affairs, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center praised the vote and expressed the hope that honors bestowed on other Lithuanians who played a role in the Holocaust would also be removed.
According to Zuroff:
"The decision is a very important first step in a process which we hope will
facilitate true reconciliation. Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šumašius deserves credit for
his role and his explanation of the decision which emphasized Škirpa's call to
his countrymen to "get rid of the Jews and create an oppressive
atmosphere so that they wouldn't even think that they could have rights
in Lithuania."
One Lithuanian defended his ethnic cleansing idea: Škirpa and the
organization which he led can be criticized in that the organizational
activity of LAF-in-Berlin elevated antisemitism to a political level and that
could have encouraged a portion of Lithuania’s residents to get involved in the
Holocaust. On the other hand it must be noted that LAF-in-Berlin proposed to
solve “the Jewish problem” not by genocide but by the method of expulsion from Lithuania.
Truly, let's face it. That in itself is a death sentence. In the 30s and 40s, Jews were not accepted in any country because they were not Christians. They could hardly get into the USA and needed a sponsor to do so. Nazis were everywhere.
The idea of saying that there was no anti-Semitism in Lithuania is ludicrous. This is a good example of how a government does such a thing. Out of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews, an estimated 190,000–195,000 were murdered before the end of World War II, most between June and December 1941.
Update: 3/6/2020
Reference:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-center-welcomes-44.html
Update: 3/6/2020
Reference:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/wiesenthal-center-welcomes-44.html
Labels: anti-Semitism, death, ehtnic cleansing, Germany, Kazys Skirpa, Lithuania, WWII
Comments:
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his statement is not correct:
"On the other hand it must be noted that LAF-in-Berlin proposed to
solve “the Jewish problem” not by genocide but by the method of expulsion from Lithuania.
This was an invention of the Lithuanian government in trying to defend his hero status."
This is from another cousin, Grant. He's active in Lithuanian WWII history being his family was right there being affected.
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"On the other hand it must be noted that LAF-in-Berlin proposed to
solve “the Jewish problem” not by genocide but by the method of expulsion from Lithuania.
This was an invention of the Lithuanian government in trying to defend his hero status."
This is from another cousin, Grant. He's active in Lithuanian WWII history being his family was right there being affected.
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