Talk:The Holocaust in Lithuania/GA1

GA Review
This review is transcluded from Talk:Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Hello there, thanks for submitting this article. I've had a read and noted the following areas that need attention. Please note I'm being critical of the article, not the authors, and that this critique is intended only to be constructive. I am writing this as I read so the points are not necessarily in order of importance:

1 dates - please correct and make consistent the formatting of all dates as found in Date
 * Done Fainites barley 16:30, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

1a numbers - please make consistent throughout the article all use of dates and numbers, do not mix 1,000,000 and '1 million' or 'one million'. See also point 4.
 * Done - except for where the phrase "tens of thousands" is used.Fainites barley 16:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

2 peacock terms - please see Avoid peacock terms and correct instances like "The numbers given by historians differ much more significantly", and "Lithuanian police battalions surpassed their own by far". There are more examples, please read through and remove similar.
 * Done. I have not removed all superlatives though as it is likely they derive from the sources as this is a subject in which even the driest of historians is moved to superlatives.Fainites barley 17:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

3 links - try and shorten some of the links, for instance the operation barbarossa link is quite long and could be improved upon. Also, there are too many red links in the text - please remove these, or at least create disambiguation pages to subjects that are related. Some links are used too commonly, and too close together - such as Pogrom, which appears linked twice in a single paragraph, and 'Simon Wiesenthal Center'. A balance has to be struck between information to the viewer, and readability. Try and insert links only where necessary.
 * Done Fainites barley 17:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

4   - use this instead of a space inbetween numbers and words. This prevents a carriage return between the number and word, and makes it easier for the reader to read. For instance, "200,000 Jews" would make that appear on the same line, rather than 200,000 and Jew being on separate lines (depends on what size of screen the viewer is browsing upon).
 * Done Fainites barley 17:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

5 Grammar - generally very good, however phrases like "Before the German invasion" could be improved thus "In the years approaching the German invasion". "The estimate" could become "This estimate", 'The' is a bit ambiguous in this context. "puts the number of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust at 195,000 to 196,000.[2] It is difficult to estimate the exact number of casualties of the Holocaust and the latter number cannot be final or indisputable." - repeated use of the word 'holocaust', and the sentence doesn't read well. Also the sentence in point 4. - what does 'foreign' mean in this context? As a reader, I'm not sure.
 * Done Fainites barley 17:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

6 The German killing squads - this is bordering on a non-neutral point of view (in my opinion that is). While subjects like this are controversial, I think the article would be better sticking to cold, hard, facts, rather than emotive terms like this. Also, begun/began in the following sentence, and About/Around/Approximately/An estimated in the following sentence. Jews did not 'wait' in Ghettos, they were imprisoned surely? Also, why is it that the majority of Jews were not in Ghettos, but a few sentences later 45,000 survived in Ghettos? This needs a little clarification.
 * Done except for the "killing squads". I'm not sure how else one could describe the einsatzgruppen. "Death squads" would be accurate. "Execution squads" implies some quasi judicial or military purpose which did not exist. These were not soldiers. The Einsatzgruppens purpose was to kill jews and certain other categories of civilians after the army had been through. Fainites barley 17:22, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

7 'quick destruction of Lithuanian Jewry' - Quick would not be my choice of word, perhaps 'rapid'? Also, 'another factor' should be changed so the viewer knows to what it refers (reading the sentence twice makes it obvious, but it should be obvious straight away).
 * Done Fainites barley 17:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

8 'Kaunas on June 25 and held agitation speeches' - gave speeches, or held rallies?
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

9 'Many of Lithuanian supporters of the Nazi policies' - 'of' and 'of the' - needs correcting
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

10 Lithuania - the incompatibility of the Jewish population within the perceived model of the Lithuanian nation-state,[1]), - punctuation, consider a semicolon instead of a hyphen, and the commas around the brackets need fixing
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

11 'By the time of German invasion,' - consider 'onset of' or 'at the time of' or similar
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

12 'The involvement of the local population and institutions, in relatively high numbers' - make clearer to the viewer what they were involved in - the blame in the sentence before, or the holocaust.
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

13 'Out of Lithuanian population of close to three millions' - bad grammar, and see point 1a.
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

14. 'sheltering the Jews' - the Jews, or just 'Jews'?
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

15. 'Jewis' - spelling
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

16. 'Since Lithuania regained independence in 1990' - independance from whom - needs stating or linking
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

17. 'Holocaust has been also difficult' - bad grammar
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

18. 'yet many heroes of the Lithuanian resistance against the Soviets' - should be 'soviet control' or similar
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

19. 'NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia have declared that' - I do not understand this sentence
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

20. 'the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) held a session during which Alfonsas Eidintas, the historian nominated as the Republic's next ambassador to Israel delivered an address dealing with an accounting of the annihilation of Lithuania's Jews' - consider linking Seimas to Lithuanian parliament, and also break up this sentence with punctuation
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

21. 'There have however been criticism that Lithuania is too slow to deal with that issue' - should be on the previous paragraph, change 'have' to 'has', and change 'that' to 'this'.
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Generally the article is well referenced, but there are several reference repeats in the references section, such as 'Dina Porat, “The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects”'. I understand that different pages are referenced, but consider instead changing the reference so the page item reads "100, 123, 152, 187" - this would simplify things. See Citing sources for general information on references. My personal preference is to use reflist in the References section, and cite web/book/news templates for each reference.

Images - consider unifying the size of both images.
 * Done Fainites barley 19:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Please edit the above points to indicate that you have attended to each one, by writing - done where relevant, or explaining why such changes are unnecessary. I am placing this article 'on hold' until improvements are made. Parrot of Doom (talk) 14:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Failed GA
As the changes I requested in my review have not been done, I am failing this article. Please feel free to address the problems I have listed and to resubmit the article in future. Parrot of Doom (talk) 19:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"Tens of thousands"
re: only a small part - a few tens of thousands from Dina Porat, “The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects”, in David Cesarani, The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation I'm sorry, but this source has to be described as challenged. Cesarani has explicitly stated that he takes Soviet propaganda about Baltic Nazis as having been "verified" by other sources--those being Nazi accounts of Baltic complicity for propaganda consumption which are contradicted by other Nazi accounts at the scene. There were categorically not tens of thousands of Lithuanians, nor Estonians, nor Latvians, participating in killing Jews. —PētersV (talk) 17:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Cesarani is an editor of the volume, but Porat has created the content.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

GA suggestions
I have completed the corrections suggested by the GA reviewer as best I am able although I haven't altered the referencing system for multiple cites of the same ref. A tricky one. Parrot of Doom may be prepared to look at it again or you may have to re-refer for GA.

As I have no access to sources and do not have a detailed knowledge of the subject I have endeavoured not to interfere with content in any way but I suggest the authors check my edits to make sure there are no inadvertent content changes.Fainites barley 19:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your hard work! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It makes a change from unvalidated psychotherapies! Fainites barley 23:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Please omit the statement that antisemitism was among the “national traditions and values” of Lithuania. MacQueen, sole the source cited, does not support the proposition. The notion that antisemitism was among the “national traditions and values” of pre-war Lithuania is conclusory, racist, inflammatory and simply wrong, and greatly hinders the reader really understanding the topic, the Holocaust in Lithuania. Pre-war Lithuania demonstrably was more accepting and tolerant of Jews than its Central European neighbors like Germany and Poland and, for that matter, many Western nations like Denmark, France and the United States -- and this even after absorbing a huge wave of Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia. Andris.