Nautilus Magazine: Digging Deeper Into Holocaust History

 The history of the uprising was written in part by those who escaped. “They tell us what happened in that final moment,” says Freund, who has led archaeological investigations into Jewish history in Israel and Europe. But the story of the Warsaw uprising, and the Holocaust, is not complete. Holocaust survivors and their stories are dwindling. Now geoscientists have stepped in to fill in the historical gaps. By employing geophysical mapping and soil sampling, among other techniques, they have located mass grave sites—there are an estimated 200 such sites in Lithuania alone—corroborated testimonies of daring escapes, and unearthed the remains of a once-thriving culture. [...]

“Science is the next frontier that will speak about these sites,” Freund says. Geophysical techniques provide a way to locate and preserve sites that have been built over, as is often the case in Holocaust sites across Europe, even locating them under the canopy of vegetation. While certain sites will be excavated, the process of discovering them does not have to be destructive, as with traditional archaeology. Using non-invasive techniques means archaeologists can hold history in situ. Such non-invasive methods are a matter of being sensitive, too. “These are mass graves of people who are victims,” Freund says. “They have been victimized once and we don’t want to disturb them again by disturbing their burials.” [...]

Geoscientists have another ambitious project planned for this summer—searching for a lost cache of information about Nazi crimes and Jewish heroes in Warsaw. Between 1940 and 1943, an organized underground operation, comprising dozens of contributors, collected thousands of documents: photographs, drawings, writings, journals and tabulations, signed and dated. They put them into 2-feet-high metal milk cans and metal boxes, and buried them in the Warsaw Ghetto. Called the Ringelblum archives after historian Emanuel Ringelblum, the caches were buried in three different locations. In 1946, a survivor found the first of the milk cans. According to Freund, the archives were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. The second part was discovered in 1950. The archives were used in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. No one has found the third cache.

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European Council on Foreign Relations: Poland in the EU: How to lose friends and alienate people

 This year, when Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, was the first to call for an extraordinary EU summit to discuss the EU’s reaction to violent events in Belarus, his words did not generate an immediately positive reaction from other capitals. An extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council is eventually taking place today – but credit should also go to Lithuania, Germany, and Sweden. It is not just the result of successful diplomatic efforts on the part of Warsaw, even if the Polish foreign ministry has sought to present it this way for its domestic audience. If any capital is currently leading on the EU’s reaction to events in Belarus, it is not Poland but the much smaller Lithuania – which merits a separate story about how to punch above one’s weight. [...]

The Law and Justice party formed a government in 2015 with a lofty promise to lift Poland’s foreign policy from its knees. Since then, however, the country’s standing in the EU has hardly improved even a bit. If anything, the trend is in the opposite direction. The Coalition Explorer survey of policy professionals reveals that collectively they regard Poland as the second most disappointing country in the bloc, after Hungary. It is also among three countries (alongside Italy and Spain) that are most often seen as punching below their weight in EU politics. [...]

However, as usual, the devil lies in the detail. Apart from a limited group of the EU’s eastern member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria; half of them Polish neighbours), rarely does anyone consider Poland as having the same longer-standing interests on EU policy; and only some of these countries (plus Germany) include Poland on the list of their most contacted partners. This clashes with Warsaw’s ambition to play the role of one of the EU’s post-Brexit ‘Big Five’, alongside Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. [...]

Most notably, the United Kingdom used to be the key western EU member that considered that Poland shared similar interests with it. This translated into strong contacts between the two capitals. Now this alliance has been moved outside the EU framework and, as a result, nowhere in the EU’s western part do policy professionals consider Poland as sharing interests with their country. Germany is the only pre-2004 EU member where Poland is among the most contacted partners – but Poland ranks only fifth, after France, Netherlands, Austria, and Spain (with which Germany does not even have the border). Relations between Warsaw and Berlin are far from perfect, to say the least, largely upon Poland’s own wish.

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Architectuul: FOMA 38: Five Examples of Sacral Architecture in Kaunas

 A choice to turn a church into a warehouse is rather interesting, since a warehouse had a symbolic meaning in the Soviet Union. Some researchers believe that converting churches into warehouses “was not the abolition of the holy but, so to speak, its replacement. The warehouse is just as ideal an order in the material world as the church is in the spiritual world. The warehouse is a materialist church, but instead of collecting people who are seeking in prayer an exalted form of the soul, it houses a multitude of objects that have found a precise inventoried form.”[2]

Nevertheless, according to various data from 1953 to 1959 nearly 15-20% of churches were closed while some of sacral buildings went through radical transformations. Vilnius Cathedral Basilica (1783) by Gucevičius was closed in 1949. During 1950 sculptures of saints, which were on the rooftop were removed and destroyed. Since the Cathedral was closed a lot of artifacts were stolen while the interior was ravaged. The Cathedral become part of the Museum of Art and was in1956 transformed into a gallery. The building was returned to the Catholic community in 1988. [...]

Kaunas Mosque also known as Vytautas the Great Mosque is one of four remaining mosques in Lithuania. Its design reminds the mosques in Northern Africa, a compact, small-volume mosque combines historical forms with oriental motifs like an elliptical dome and a small minaret, which was never used for its traditional purpose.

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The Conversation: How China lost central and eastern Europe

Bulgaria is not the only country in the region to have qualms about China. In the Czech Republic, Prague city council ended its sister-city relationship with Beijing in October 2019 in favour of a partnership with Taipei. The president of the senate then announced plans to visit Taiwan in August in defiance of China.

In May, the Lithuanian foreign minister called for Taiwan to be reinstated to the World Health Organization. The same month, CEE officials were among signatories of a protest letter against China’s introduction of national security legislation in Hong Kong. [...]

First, China has not fulfilled the lavish promises it made to the region for large-scale investments. Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU peaked in 2016 at US$43 billion, then plummeted back to 2012 levels in 2019, with the expectation that 2020 would be even lower. [....]

Second, growing frustration with their marginalisation has led CEE countries to reflect on their political identity. In particular, the wave of recent protests in Hong Kong brought back memories of their own fight against Soviet control. Hongkongers’ use of tactics developed by eastern-European dissidents – such as the Lennon Wall and the Baltic Way – resonated in the region. [...]

Third, CEE countries have grown wary of the political risks associated with their bonhomie with China, amid growing criticism from the EU and US over the past few years. For some, this reassessment has been associated with the tech cold war between the US and China. Following pressure from Washington, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Estonia have indicated they will ban Chinese firm Huawei from the construction of their 5G networks.

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Politico: Weak support for liberal democracy in EU’s east, poll says

The study published by the Globsec think tank found that in four out of 10 countries surveyed — Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria — less than 50 percent of respondents backed "liberal democracy with regular elections and multiparty system" as the best form of government. [...]

In Austria, the preference was reversed, with the equivalent figures 7 percent and 92 percent. Meanwhile, in Hungary and Poland, 81 percent and 66 percent, respectively, voiced support for the system of liberal democracy. Twelve percent and 26 percent respectively want a strong leader. [...]

Majorities in Slovakia (72 percent), Estonia (56 percent), Hungary (52 percent) and the Czech Republic (72 percent) said migrants threaten their identity and values. [...]

In Hungary, 64 percent of respondents said they believe the government influences the media, while 62 percent said the same in Poland. Meanwhile 57 percent of Austrians said "oligarchs and strong financial groups" have such an influence.

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EURACTIV: Six EU countries join call for 100% renewable energy scenario

But none of the eight options, which range from business-as-usual to net-zero emission cuts, included a scenario based on 100% renewable energies. And only two of them achieve climate neutrality, which in the meantime was chosen by EU heads of states and government as the preferred option. [...]

Last week, the Commission tabled a landmark Climate Law, aiming to make the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality objective “irreversible” by turning it into a legally-binding obligation on all 27 member states. [...]

The detailed impact assessment was requested by EU member states as a prerequisite for raising the EU’s 2030 target to 50-55% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, up from 40% currently. [...]

Researchers from Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) recently unveiled their own model of a 100% system, which would involve 20 independent European regions or “islands” connected together through a “super grid”.

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euronews: Denmark calls for EU ban on all diesel and petrol cars by 2040

Denmark made headlines in October 2018 when its government announced that it would ban the sale of all fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030 but it subsequently scrapped the idea because this would have breached EU rules. [...]

Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and several other countries, however, suggested that more must be done to stop the "carbon leakage" of selling second-hand autos from western Europe to the eastern region.

Jorgensen said it was important to communicate the bloc's long-term policy directions to carmakers and that Denmark's next step was to set up an alliance with the 10 member states that support its proposal.

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euronews: Trust in EU at its highest in five years, new poll shows

At 44%, trust in the EU is at its highest level since 2014 and ten percentage points ahead of trust in national governments and parliament, Eurobarometer said.

Among other key findings, 61% of Europeans are optimistic about the future of the EU.

Meanwhile, 55% of Europeans say they are satisfied with the way democracy works in the EU, the highest score since 2004.

Support for the euro reached a record high 76%.

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euronews: Which country in Europe has the highest imprisonment rate?

It dropped 6.6%, from 109.7 inmates per 100,000 of people in 2016 to 102.5 last year, according to the Council of Europe. [...]

Russia has by far the highest proportion of people behind bars in Europe, with 418.3 inmates per 100,000 of the country's population.

Many ex-Eastern Bloc countries also have high incarceration rates: Russia is followed by Georgia (252.2), Azerbaijan (235) and Lithuania (234.9), the highest in the EU.

Europe’s lowest incarceration rates were found in Iceland (46.8), Finland (51.1), Netherlands (54.4), Sweden (56.5), Denmark (63.2) and Norway (65.4). [...]

Iceland had the biggest jump in the proportion of people behind bars between 2016 and 2018, recording a 25.4% increase. [...]

France had the highest suicide rate per 100,000 inmates at 12.6, just ahead of Austria at 12.3, and Germany at 11.8.

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Politico: Foreign Dark Money Is Threatening American Democracy

The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. If even a small fraction of that ends up in our political campaigns, it constitutes an unacceptable national security risk.

While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money. [...]

The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk. In 2004, for example, Lithuania’s president was impeached after the media disclosed that a Russian oligarch who contributed to his campaign later received Lithuanian citizenship. Just this past January, in Montenegro, a local politician was charged with laundering Russian funds to support a pro-Russian political party. In Australia, an intelligence report leaked in 2017 exposed pervasive Chinese financial influence in the country’s domestic politics. Similar allegations recently surfaced in New Zealand.

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Politico: Inside the EU, eastern approaches diverge

The formerly communist members of the EU club — from the Baltics in the north to Romania and Bulgaria at Europe’s edge — are diverging on big issues such as the rule of law and defense.

The weakening of their close ties could most immediately impact the negotiations over the next seven-year EU budget. The last time around, the Eastern bloc took a common position with other like-minded countries on regional funds, wresting billions from the EU in aid.[...]

The splits have emerged markedly only in recent months. A year ago, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the Visegrad group — a club founded by Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary to advance the eastern cause in Europe and known by the acronym V4 — “one of the poles of the European Union.” Yet as the Hungarians and the Poles have since repeatedly clashed with Brussels over their alleged democratic backsliding, and Orbán resorts now to calling the EU “an empire,” Prague and Bratislava have been notable in their moderation. [...]

Tomáš Petříček, the Czech Republic’s newly appointed foreign minister, has distanced Prague from Orbán’s vision of “illiberal democracy” and pledged not to shrink from from criticizing other Visegrad group members. “Among partners and allies, it’s good practice not just to assure each other of mutual support but also to talk about things that we don’t just see as positive,” he told Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper last month.

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openDemocracy: Mimetic power: how Russia pretends to be a normal member of the international community

While explaining the concept to Russian diplomats, Putin viewed Russia’s soft power as either diplomacy, or most likely, propaganda that can be made available, or even enhanced or intensified, at will. Soft power, however, according to Joseph Nye’s discussion of the concept, is the pre-existing ability to influence other countries through attraction, with resources of soft power being a nation’s political values, culture and foreign policy. Being a pre-existing ability, soft power differs from an immediate action that, for example, can be a diplomatic action, propaganda effort or humanitarian gesture.[...]

What happened when Moscow realised that it was dramatically failing to use “soft power” to influence Western nations through attraction? Not only after 2014 but even before, they must have realised that the Kremlin’s political values did not match prevailing Western values and that its peculiar international behaviour – no matter how assured they were of its legitimacy and credibility – was one of the reasons for the deterioration of the relations with the West. Russian official diplomacy and public diplomacy can still draw upon what they believe to be Russian high culture as an important resource of soft power, but it has limited value considering the failures that overshadow Russia’s cultural achievements.[...]

Russia’s mimetic power is the ability to influence Western nations by creating the impression that Russia is a normal member of the international community and emulating what pro-Kremlin actors perceive as Western soft power techniques. By presenting Russia as a credible and responsible international partner, Moscow is trying to convince the West – especially following the Ukraine-related escalation of the conflict between the West and Russia – to lift the sanctions, go back to “business as usual”, and ultimately stop any attempts to democratise Russia (Moscow sees the latter as Western attempts to bring about a regime change in Russia). The emulation of perceived Western soft power techniques serves two objectives: first, to contribute to the creation of the image of Russia adapted to the Western normalcy, and, second, to undermine Western resolve to stand up to Moscow’s subversive activities.[...]

For example, Russian officials would regularly slam Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for allegedly infringing on the rights of Russian-speaking minorities, while Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would publish a series of “white books” discussing “violations of human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine” at the same time as other Russian agencies send military forces to invade Ukraine. Yet when human rights “go too far”, implying that Moscow fails to wriggle out of particular criticisms, Russian officials have a readymade excuse: Western human rights contradict “the fundamentals of our culture based on Orthodox Christianity”.

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statista: The worst countries to be gay in Europe

The latest edition of ILGA Europe's Rainbow List has found that Malta, Belgium and Norway are the most LGBTI-friendly countries in Europe. The annual review ranks 49 European countries on a scale from 0 percent to 100 percent. Those closer to 0 percent are considered worst for gross violations of human rights and discrimination while the other end of the scale respects human rights and full equality.

LGBTI people planning a trip are best advised to avoid Turkey, Armenia and Azerbeijan. The latter is rock-bottom of the ranking with 4.70 percent. Russia, host of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, also scores poorly on the list with 10.90 percent.

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Bloomberg: Europe’s Depopulation Time Bomb Is Ticking in the Baltics

The trend is hitting especially hard in the Baltics. Latvia, with a current population of 1.96 million, has lost about 25 percent of its residents since throwing off Soviet control in 1991. The UN predicts that by 2050, it will have lost an additional 22 percent of its current population—second only to Bulgaria—and by 2100, 41 percent. [...]

As bad as those numbers look, the trend looks even worse for Ukraine and Moldova. The UN predicts 36 percent and 51 percent declines in those nations by the end of the century, respectively. Russia, meanwhile, is expected to lose 13 percent by 2100.

Several factors are contributing to the depopulation of Eastern Europe, and Latvia has all of them: low income, compared with more developed EU nations; insufficient growth; and strong anti-immigrant sentiment. The average annual take-home pay among all EU nations was 24,183 euros ($29,834) in 2015, according to Eurostat, while in Latvia it was only 6,814 euros ($8,406).  [...]

Nine out of 10 countries with the lowest acceptance rate of immigrants are former members of the Eastern bloc. Of these, the three Baltic nations had been previously forced to accept Russian-speaking migrants. In Latvia, the issue is so controversial that in 2015, when the EU insisted it accept just a few hundred Syrian refugees, nationalists initially threatened to withdraw from the government. That same year, Latvia came in second to last in the Migrant Integration Policy Index, which ranks 38 democracies according to the quality of immigration policies. Only Turkey did worse. Latvia was fourth from the bottom in Gallup’s 2017 Migrant Acceptance Score list, which ranks countries in order of their populations’ attitudes to immigrants. 

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The Guardian: 'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe

The survey of 16- to 29-year-olds found the Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe, with 91% of that age group saying they have no religious affiliation. Between 70% and 80% of young adults in Estonia, Sweden and the Netherlands also categorise themselves as non-religious.

The most religious country is Poland, where 17% of young adults define themselves as non-religious, followed by Lithuania with 25%. [...]

But there were significant variations, he said. “Countries that are next door to one another, with similar cultural backgrounds and histories, have wildly different religious profiles.”  [...]

In the Czech Republic, 70% said they never went to church or any other place of worship, and 80% said they never pray. In the UK, France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands, between 56% and 60% said they never go to church, and between 63% and 66% said they never pray.  

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Deutsche Welle: Stealthy sleuths: Lithuania calls for 'cyber Schengen' zone

As NATO and the European Union team up to cut red tape for troops to move more quickly through Europe to counter a potential crisis, Lithuania is leading an effort to do the same for cyber defenders. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite has called on fellow EU leaders to support the creation of a "cyber Schengen," modeled on the area of free movement of people within the European Union, to better battle online crime and aggression which operate border-free. [...]

Besides being deployed to protect civilian infrastructure under attack, including EU institutions themselves, "it's easier to talk about joint efforts in cyberspace in Europe than in NATO," Kerza told DW.

He said that in his meetings with counterparts on both the military and civilian sides, he constantly hears discussion about trust. "When you talk about NATO, normally you talk about secrets and when it comes to secrets, countries do not want to open doors very widely. When we're talking about cyber in the EU...about 80 percent of incidents are open, not classified." [...]

But the incident itself was serious. The false information was also sent as an "alert" by email from the genuine "tv3.lt" email address. "The messages were sent to high-level politicians including the president and prime minister, representatives of the parliament, and journalists," Karoblis explained. Clicking on it unleashed a virus in users' computers. "The aim was to extract information and actually take over the IT systems," he said.

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Quartz: The fastest shrinking countries on earth are in Eastern Europe

The top 10 countries with the fastest shrinking populations are all in Eastern Europe (with a few in Central and Northern Europe), according to UN projections. Bulgaria, Latvia, Moldova, Ukraine, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Hungary, are estimated to see their population shrink by 15% or more by 2050.

In Bulgaria, the world’s fastest shrinking country, the population is expected to drop from 7 million in 2017 to 5.4 million in 2050. In Latvia, the population is estimated to drop from 1.9 million in 2017 to 1.5 million, whilst in Moldova, the population is estimated to shrink from 4 million to 3.2 million. [...]

At least 11 countries have shrunk by more than 10% in terms of their population size since 1989, Sobotka says, including, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine. Latvia lost over a quarter of its population (27%), Lithuania 23%, Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina 21%. For instance, Bulgarian population contracted from 9 million in 1989 to 7.1 million in 2017. “That’s a massive population loss, unprecedented in peace times,” he explains.

Sobotka puts this population loss down to three factors—falling fertility rates, massive out-migration and relatively high mortality. “So whereas Western and southern European countries have attracted a lot of immigration which largely offset the effects of low fertility, the East is in a double bind, experiencing both out-migration and low birth rates,” he says.

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Statista: The Czechs Are Europe's Top-Beer Drinkers

Which European countries tend to drink the most beer every year? The Czech Republic is well known as a haven for beer lovers, tracing its brewing history all the way back to the Břevnov Monastery in 993. Today, Czechs are Europe's biggest beer drinkers, consuming 143 litres per capita every year, according to the Brewers of Europe. Germany comes second with people drinking an average of 104 litres each year, just ahead of neighbouring Austria where they drink marginally less each.

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The New York Review of Books: Poems from the Abyss

Miłosz’s earliest memories were of fear. He remembered sitting on a bench with a friendly Cossack who suddenly jumped to give a hand to his fellow soldiers, who had caught and were about to slaughter a white lamb that the young Miłosz was attached to. Back in Lithuania, he did not attend school, so his mother took charge of his early education. Unlike writers and intellectuals he knew later in life, most of whom were raised in cities, he spent his childhood in a small farming community, which he idealized later as an earthly paradise, playing with peasant children and roaming the countryside alone or in their company. As is often the case, the way he saw the world as an adult was closely related to the place where he was born and grew up. If Miłosz retained in his poetry the traces of a pantheistic strain in Lithuanian folk culture—which holds that the divine is dispersed throughout nature—that ought not to come as a surprise. [...]

Miłosz held a job as a literary programmer and commentator for Radio Wilno until he was dismissed because of his leftist views and his willingness to allow Jews to broadcast. Like others in Europe and the United States, he was appalled by the suffering inflicted on workers under capitalism and open to the idea of a radical change. Though he wanted to see the old order destroyed, he grew uncomfortable as his friends moved further to the left since he had no idea what new system could replace the old and was repulsed by the supporters of both Soviet communism and Polish nationalism. “I was governed,” he said, “less by reason than by a sense of smell…and this, in turn, put me on guard against any ‘ism.’” [...]

Once he became a free man, Miłosz was ostracized by the Parisian literary world; Stalinism was in vogue with many of the writers he’d gotten to know at parties at the Polish and Russian embassies, and they took every opportunity to tell their hosts how fortunate it must be to live in such enlightened societies back home. Now these same intellectuals turned their backs on Miłosz and called him an American agent. Polish expatriates were even nastier. “If Miłosz has an ounce of honesty, he ought to hang himself,” a fellow poet wrote to an émigré paper.

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Politico: Visegrad 4 cools on Europe, and each other

Tensions within the so-called Visegrad Group burst into the open last week over the question of Europe’s cross-border labor rules, as Poland and Hungary refused to follow Slovakia and the Czech Republic in endorsing a French-led compromise to tighten regulations on employees posted to work in the EU outside their home countries.

A bigger worry to those hoping to maintain a semblance of unity is that Prague could turn away from the alliance under populist oligarch Andrej Babiš, whose party won the parliamentary election on October 20-21. Though Babiš is not as ideological as Poland’s current right-wing leadership and doesn’t have a poisonous history with EU institutions like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, he’s given little indication of what his foreign policy will look like. [...]

“The attempt to turn this club into a counterweight failed,” said Milan Nič, an analyst with the German Council on Foreign Relations who previously worked for Slovakia’s foreign ministry. “They’re too divided on fundamental issues to push a common agenda, but they want to also prove that it’s not over. All four need the club.” [...]

Macron argues the current rules make it too easy for employers to avoid paying social security contributions in countries such as France, where the payments are much higher than in Central Europe. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, however, worry that the reform, which EU ministers approved by a qualified majority, undermines the single market and will hit their citizens particularly hard. In addition to Hungary and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia opposed the measure.  

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