Talk:Yitzhak Arad

Quoted passage from "Operation Reinhart camps"
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/aktion-reinhard/epilog-arad.html

Plunder of Jewish Property in the Nazi-Occupied Areas of the Soviet Union
Plunder of Jewish Property in the Nazi-Occupied Areas of the Soviet Union

As in other occupied areas, Jewish property in the USSR was plundered. The plunder’s special character derived from the unusual economic conditions in the country, the nature of the personal property there, and the variety of interested German functionaries. Specially appointed bodies were designated to deal with expropriating Jewish property, but this was complicated by the conflicting interests of the various German – civilian and military – and local authorities, with each desiring the property and seeking to profit from it. The plunder was undertaken through a variety of means, such as expropriating homes, financial levies (“contributions”), collecting furniture, household wares, work tools and clothing, etc. The plundered money and/or property was meant generally for immediate local use and was sometimes sent to other authorities. At times, the local authorities got part of the property (usually apartments), and in other cases the German authorities rewarded collaborators with this property. Alongside the official plunder, for which there are estimates, there was also private plunder for personal use, plunder whose volume reached several hundred million Reichsmarks, if not billions.


 * How is the above passage related to this article? I'd suggest it be inserted in an article on the topic noted, citing Yitzhak Arad (if he's the author). Deborahjay 01:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Yitzhak Arad as IDF Chief Education Officer (pre-1972)?
I've heard that Brigadier General Yitzhak Arad held the post of IDF Chief Education Officer, but I've yet to corroborate this with some authoritative source. I can do the library research next week, but would appreciate if anyone can fill this in, particularly the dates, and any other pertinent details about his military career in Israel.

(NB: Missed my chance to ask him over lunch today, after hearing him speak on Operation Barbarossa. At least it motivated me to do a rewrite/expansion of this article :-) Deborahjay 01:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Functionalist or intentionalist?
Is Arad a functionalist or an intentionalist01:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 21:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

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Cause for concern
I am extremely disturbed to see that an editor has inserted Lithuanian nationalist revisionist claims that this survivor of a genocide in a large part perpetrated by lithuanian collaborators has himself committed "genocide" against Lithuanians in his fight against the "resistance" (Lithuanian fascists). The Lithuanian government investigation of Arad as a war criminal (while it celebrates Nazi collaborators as national heroes) is a travesty of justice. Duly deleted.--Monochrome _ Monitor  21:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Cleanup of POV
The article has unfortunately been the target of some POV pushing recently, with the introduction of various unsourced personal opinions, extremist views (e.g. branding of all of mainstream modern Lithuania, Lithuanian government agencies, the media etc as "pro-Nazi", evil or whatever, with a strong pro-Soviet undercurrent, quite in the tradition of Putin's propaganda machinery) and soapboxing in the section on the war crimes investigation in Lithuania (e.g. material that is completely unrelated to the investigation that the section ostensibly discusses, or even to Arad himself, in addition to just being a form of POV about Lithuania as a country). These disruptive edits also made the section on the investigation ridiculously long and without a clear focus. They have now been cleaned up, and the section has been returned to a sensible and proportional length and limited to the discussion of the actual topic of the section (as described in the heading, i.e. the investigation). This is not the place to write about "all that is wrong with Lithuania in my opinion"; for that a blog would be a better option. --Tataral (talk) 03:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, for the record, (some of the worst) examples of POV include --Tataral (talk) 03:58, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * "In the Soviet era Arad was honored in Lithuania as a war hero"
 * He wasn't honoured by Lithuania, but by Stalin and those guys during the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. In any event, his Soviet Medal belongs in the section above, not in the section about the investigation in the 2000s.
 * "However in post-Communist Lithuania anti-Nazi partisans, particularly Jewish ones, are portrayed as traitors"
 * A blatantly POV statement about Lithuania as a country that is also unsourced and unrelated to the topic of the section, and even to the article
 * "An openly anti-semitic newspaper"
 * A blatantly POV and unsourced statement. It would be better to just write the name of the newspaper.
 * "The state-sponsored Genocide Center takes a revisionist view of the Holocaust" etc etc etc etc
 * A blatantly POV statement about a Lithuanian government agency. Also completely unrelated to the topic of the section.
 * "According to Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff, "Not a single Lithuanian war criminal has sat one day—not one minute!—in a Lithuanian prison since independence"
 * Of absolutely no relevance to the topic of the section, which is (the investigation of) Arad's service in the NKVD (which he doesn't appear to dispute), not whether other people have been sent to prison for other crimes (Arad hasn't been sent to prison either). The NKVD was undeniably a criminal organisation responsible for horrendous crimes, including mass executions, deportations of entire nationalities, running the Gulag concentration camps, general Stalinist political repression and more, as the article on the organisation notes, and a discussion of an investigation of possible war crimes in relation to service in the NKVD should stay focused on that.


 * This still remains a serious issue here, the article should discuss Arad's role in these events and during the war based on proven facts instead of attacking his critics with political arguments. -213.243.171.191 (talk) 19:22, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

The Arad Affair
Here's an interesting source on the Lithuanian investigation: Amending the Past: Europe's Holocaust Commissions and the Right to History. I thus feel that mentioning the investigation in the lead is WP:UNDUE without proper context. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:22, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I've attempted to make the section on the investigation more neutral: diff. It needs expansion; the source linked above discusses how the investigation has damaged Lithuania's reputation and adds interesting details on the perceptions of the "Affair". K.e.coffman (talk) 05:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The chapter notes that: "During what Arad described as a 'punitive action', he and other Soviet-backed forest fighters burned Lithuanian civilians out of their homes". It should come as no surprise that Lithuanian prosecutors chose to initiate an investigation based on such an admission, because "burning civilians out of their homes" is in fact objectively a clear-cut case of a war crime. The revelations about his service in the NKVD and his participation in "punitive action" against civilians in this capacity have indeed been damaging, but not to Lithuania, but rather to Arad himself (as frequently noted by his supporters). --Tataral (talk) 06:47, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Reliable sources say the opposite:
 * "In this case, Valentukevicius’s tactics proved to be extremely damaging to Lithuania’s global image. Lithuania’s foreign affairs secretary, Oskaras Jusys, conceded as much in 2009, when he stated that the prosecutor’s office had let itself be pushed around by “outside” elements and that there had been no basis for an investigation of Arad. “Their mistake was to go ahead without clear evidence,” Jusys lamented. 31 He added that the case “created so much damage” for Lithuania, a reference to the statements of condemnation that poured in from the United States, the European Union, Israel, and the international Jewish community."


 * Karn, Alexander. Amending the Past : Europe's Holocaust Commissions and the Right to History, University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  22:40, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Karn, Alexander. Amending the Past : Europe's Holocaust Commissions and the Right to History, University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  22:40, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

K.e. wrote: "See talk". Please notice that I self-reverted after seeing Tataral's explanations, so I dont' quite understand your revert to actually an old version Tataral was objecting. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * (cur | prev) 22:20, 25 April 2017‎ K.e.coffman (talk | contribs)‎ . . (12,510 bytes) (+722)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 777256520 by Staszek Lem (talk): Undue in the lead; pls See Talk. (TW)) (undo | thank)
 * (cur | prev) 20:29, 25 April 2017‎ Staszek Lem (talk | contribs)‎ . . (11,788 bytes) (-722)‎ . . (Undid revision 777256520 by Staszek Lem (talk)) (undo)
 * (cur | prev) 20:28, 25 April 2017‎ Staszek Lem (talk | contribs)‎ . . (12,510 bytes) (+722)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 777054704 by

re: "burning civilians out of their homes" is in fact objectively a clear-cut case of a war crime - Obviously not that "clear-cut". When "forest brothers" were coming out at night and burning communists and kolkhoz chairmen out of their homes with their families and little babies, then it was OK, right? Because they were fighting with Communism, right? It is very easy to slap "crime" label today. There was lots of bad blood on both sides at these times. Please keep personal wikipedian's opinions out of articles. Stick to the facts and official statements. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I objected to the content about the Lithuanian investigation being in the lead. I then edited the article to remove POV language that the editor was objecting to. I think all is well now. BTW, thanks to whomever added the photo. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:20, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The investigation section is too long (WP:UNDUE), through the solution is not too shorten it but to expand the rest of the article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:34, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

The Soviet medal
Note that I didn't introduce the information about the Partisan Medal, First Degree, but merely moved it to the section about his early life. It was added by a clearly pro-Arad editor. I don't really feel very strongly about whether to include it or not, but I believe Wikipedia biographies in general tend to include decorations even if the decoration is relatively common. Arad also appears to appreciate this decoration and consider it important (from his own perspective). He mentions the medal and the importance it had for him in his autobiography, and it is mentioned in other sources, easily found on the Internet. --Tataral (talk) 00:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

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Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 9 May 2021
Please add to list of books published by Yithak Arad: It Happened On our Planet - Morality and Dilemmas of Survival among Jews during the Holcaust. 2020. ISBN-978-965-201-135-0 Moovit1 (talk) 09:14, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This book was really published but in Hebrew: (t &#183; c)  buidhe  12:44, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Run n Fly (talk) 15:37, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 30 April 2022
Please add this new york times obituary as a reference https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/obituaries/yitzhak-arad-dead.html Eitanb7 (talk) 10:28, 30 April 2022 (UTC)


 * ✅ ji11720 (talk) 16:40, 13 May 2022 (UTC)