The final insult from Lithuania

Brantovskaya told Whewell of how she and other Jews took to the forests to fight the Nazis. Those who remained in the ghettoes were butchered. Said Brantovskaya: “At least our comrades died with guns in their hands. For two years in the ghetto , they tried to dehumanise us.”

So what were the war crimes these partisans were said to have committed? Well, according to the Lithuanian prosecutor, Brantovskaya’s band may have murdered 38 villagers in Kanyaki — a village which denied the partisans food and resources. Ironically, the evidence for these “murders” came from the partisans themselves in the form of memoirs proudly written years ago.

Distinguished war historian sir Martin Gilbert was bemused by the interest shown by the Lithuanian authorities.

He said: “Clearly of those whose names have been blackened by history, Jewish partisans are very low down. I don’t think they have anything to be ashamed of.”

Ephraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre went further: “The participation of so many Lithuanian volunteers in the mass murder of Jews is a sensitive subject.

“If it turned out that Jews also murdered Lithuanians, it would ease their consciences.”

Gilbert agreed that there  was some “vexation” in Lithuania over the international focus on the Holocaust — the daily reminder that they had something to do with the murder of the Jews.

However, for Lithuanians, the horrific treatment they received under the Soviet regime was at least as bad as that of the Nazis and there was a campaign underway for the crimes committed by both these two dictatorships be treated in exactly the same way by war crimes investigators.

Whewell pointed out that there was now “a poisoned fog” over who did what to whom in the war, and no agreed version of events. A senior Lithuanian official claimed that the War Crimes Commission was being completely even-handed over who was being investigated. But perhaps tellingly, 24 Soviet collaborators have been investigated and only three Nazi henchmen. And all of those called as witnesses against the collaborators happen to be Jewish. Coincidence, or has Lithuanian antisemitism actually outlived its Jewish population?

Ever since Cilla introduced the first ever Blind Date, TV companies have realised that programmes about finding a partner make compelling viewing. What better way to liven up the religious slot, therefore, than making a documentary about those using dating websites to find matches within  their own faiths? Those featured in the first of the six-part series were Tracy, a born-again Christian looking for a like-minded man; Berihan, a Muslim girl looking for a guy who didn’t mind her drinking in bars and going clubbing; and Daniel, who, despite not being particularly religious, wanted to find a nice Jewish girl.

Daniel was forced to register on Jdate, because he was more or less the only Jew in the village. He lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where, he said, there were “only three Jews — my dad, my mum and me”.

He seemed to be having too much fun to have time to find a woman. By day a champion cocktail shaker, by night a Soho DJ, and at the weekends, the rider of various classic motorbikes, one wondered whether Daniel was treating the business of finding a Jewish girl with the seriousness it deserved.

Certainly, in the first episode, while Tracy wined and dined in Nando’s with Moses, a remarkably cheerful man from Gambia, Daniel failed to meet anyone.

Maybe he was being too fussy. On the other hand, Berihan was more realistic. “If they have good chat and they haven’t fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down , the have got a chance.”

Shame she wasn’t Jewish. She seemed just like Daniel’s kind of girl.