Search Results for: Ricardas Cekutis + Genocide Center


O P I N I O N

by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis

Authorized translation from the Lithuanian original that appeared on Balsas.lt on 5 April 2012.


 

Yesterday, April 4, my colleague Petras Auštrevičius sent me a fragment of some internet correspondence between you, Ričardas Čekutis, and Morta Vidūnaitė. You, commenting upon the conversation, expressed this thought:

“But a nationalist [or “ethnic”] state, Morta, is one where government, i.e., sovereignty, belongs to the [ethnic] nation, which is what is written in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. Not to some sort of ‘citizens’ but to the [ethnic] Lithuanian people. This is also the principle of the supremacy of national law over all transnational formations, such as the EU, into which we were shoved through deceit and forgeries.

“In a nationalist [ethnic] state, for example, characters such as Auštrevičius, Andriukaitis and Karosas would be shot without hesitation, and that would be right, for treason. Well, you’ll see, very soon…”

I wouldn’t want to argue with your thought that they would shoot us, because an opinion is an opinion. But this sentence that “well, you will see, very soon,” understood rather clearly from the context that we will see some shootings has a very different meaning. But more about that a bit later.

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OPINION  |  VILNIUS GENOCIDE CENTER  |  VILNIUS GENOCIDE MUSEUM  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

Defending History was there. See Background and DH’s take on the trial.

THE PLAINTIFFS’ TABLE: Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, longtime contributing writer at DH (left) represented absent American plaintiff Grant Gochin at the hearing on state honors for Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika, whose case was first brought to the English speaking world in 2012  by Evaldas Balčiūnas, who was also in attendance.  At right is attorney Rokas Rudzinskas. PHOTO © Defending History 2019.

VILNIUS—As the long-awaited trial opened this morning, the Genocide Center’s official and two lawyers explained to the three-judge panel that they need a lot of time to study so many documents, including some less-than-perfect printouts, hence an adjournment would be required. The next hearing was set for 5 March. In fact, the Genocide Center has for many  years been familiar with the documents demonstrating Jonas Noreika’s brutal Holocaust collaboration (and has for years tried to say that they prove “only” ethnic cleansing, expulsion, isolation and ghettoization, humiliation, and plunder of all the region’s citizens who were Jewish).

Just seven people came to observe (three of them from DH’s team, nobody from abroad). There was no local media coverage as of now. US, UK, Israeli embassies sent no observers. Efforts to “muzzle the whole thing” seem to have been effective.

Update of 19 Jan: media blackout at the national and local level here has continued unbroken as of today (except for “Putin-propagandist” pseudo-media)

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VILNIUS MARCHES  |  KAUNAS  MARCHES  |  REGIONAL PRO-NAZI MARCHES  |  COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  EVENTS  |  OPINION

By Defending History Staff

Photos by Julius Norwilla, Ruta Ostrovskaya, and Dovid Katz

VILNIUS—For the 11th year running, the center of Lithuania’s beautiful capital, Vilnius, was gifted in the high afternoon hours this past Sunday, Match 11th, to far-righters and neo-Nazis on the annual holiday cherished by the free world for its historic importance, in 1990, in the series of events that toppled the Soviet Union’s hated misrule. The Defending History community, all resolute admirers of Lithuania who celebrate its successhas monitored this event annually. The international outcry after the 2008 event, which featured “Juden raus” and a throng of swastikas had led to curious “compromises” each year between organizers and the municipality on what will and will not be done. But no sign yet of the mayor’s office, municipality or government finding the moral backbone to just say, “No, not in the center of our capital on our independence day.”

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[Last media link update: 26 Feb. 2017]

Defending History Monitors Kaunas Neo-Nazi March on Lithuania’s Feb. 16th Independence Day

OUR REPORT ON THE RUN-UP TO THE MARCH

Media coverage of the march: JTA; History News NetworkTimes of Israel (French edition); BNS / Delfi.lt; Bernardinai.ltAlkas.lt; Diena.lt; Kaunaskasvyksta.ltKauno.diena.lt15min.lt; tv3.lt;  Novaya Gazeta; Antisemitism.org.ilIzrus.co.il; EinNews.com; CBS8.comWFMJ.comFox8Live; TodayInTheNews.comOfficial Lithuanian Jewish Community response; TelAvivTimes.com

The five-person Defending History team was the only human rights monitor  this year. “We came to remember the 30,000 murdered Jews of Kaunas on the independence day that they too patriotically marked with love every year. It is shocking that yet again the mayor and city council have gifted the center of the city, including Liberty Boulevard and the plaza of the historic presidential palace, on the cherished independence day, to the neo-nazis who so damage the name of modern, tolerant, democratic Lithuania.”

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O P I N I O N /  E Y E W I T N E S S    R E P O R T

by Dovid Katz

Lithuania’s March 11th independence day is celebrated by the free world, not least by those who remember the incredible news that spread around the globe in March 1990, when Lithuania’s parliament (Seimas) voted 124 to zero to break away from the Soviet Union. The courage of the parliamentarians from a broad spectrum of parties and movements was stark; the country was still occupied by ominous Soviet forces (and blood would be spilled by Soviet forces’ violence less than a year later, in January 1991). The March 11th celebration has been anchored  over the years by a record of achievement that includes the transition to democracy, the joining of the European Union and NATO, and the rapid integration with Western society, economy and mores.

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B O O K S    /    O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

The unfortunate and wasteful campaign of Holocaust obfuscation waged by certain East European state institutions continues apace. The level of investment continues to strike outsiders as puzzling, given current economic and cultural issues and the younger population’s clear focus on the future and a better life for all in the new and multicultural European Union. Here in Lithuania, the first victims of the government’s (rather Soviet-style) “genocide industry” are the hard-working people of the country who deserve more judicious disbursement of their nation’s resources. The state-sponsored Genocide Center has just released three simultaneous editions (English, Lithuanian and Russian) of a new book on the Vilna Ghetto by historian Arūnas Bubnys, its own “director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Department.”

 Dr. Bubnys is also a member of the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” (known for short as the “red-brown commission”). He was one of a minority of members of the Commission who refused to sign the (in the opinion of some, inadequate) letter of 14 October 2013 to Dr. Yitzhak Arad.

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O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

When I wrote about three glorified Lithuanian Freedom Army colonels who had in fact been implicated in the Holocaust, I did not realize quite how deep-rooted the shameful worship of Nazi-era war criminals has become here in Lithuania. I used to think that a few mistakes had been made due to patriotic excesses. A year has passed since that article, and I no longer feel that this is just some irksome problem “still encountered now and then”…

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O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

Can history be bought up by even a small state’s nationalist government that has talked itself into the idea that revision of history and wide acceptance of that revision is somehow a national cause? It becomes a serious issue when that state is willing to invest heavily in the enterprise, at a time when the targeted influential foreigners are far from the issues at hand and easily manipulated.

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On 1 April 2012, three members of the Lithuanian Parliament — Petras Auštrevičius, Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis and Justinas Karosas — submitted a formal letter to prosecutors asking for an investigation into the threats made by a “chief specialist” (PDF here) at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center, who has also published antisemitic, racist and homophobic statements and participated in the organization of neo-Nazi marches (see e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

[Two of the three targeted parliamentarians are signatories to the Seventy Years Declaration, and were recently attacked by the foreign minister; see here and here; see also MP Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis’s response here.]

The Lithuanian original of the three parliamentarians’ 1 April letter to prosecutors is here. A full English translation follows below.

[See also the 5 April 2012 article by MP Andriukaitas (English here), Ignas Krasauskas’s 4 April report, and Geoff Vasil’s 12 April analysis.]


To the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania

1 April 2012 No. 04-11/2012

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Lithuania’s major daily newspaper, Lietuvos rytas — Lrytas.lt — made some local journalistic history today with an extensive article by Dovilė Tuskenytė on the dangerous mainstreaming of neo-Nazism in the country that succeeded in its principal interview in eliciting the unvarnished tone of the movement. The article’s title in translation: ‘Lithuanian Neo-Nazis, who use paganism for cover, work in state institutions and claim the swastika is only a historical symbol’. There was general agreement in the human rights community that the article represented an important advance and that its author is to be congratulated. An English translation is available here.

The article is accompanied by a series of 23 photographs making very clear the nature of ‘national patriots’ involved in neo-Nazi activity, as well as the intent of the ‘recycled pagan symbols’ used nowadays by neo-Nazi groups. It follows the recent Delfi.lt article exposing government financial support for such groups.

Ms. Tuskenytė’s article contains an interview with the state-sponsored Genocide Center’s Ričardas Čekutis, who continues to be listed as a ‘chief specialist’ by the Center, some five months after serving as one of the organizers and leaders of a neo-Nazi march through the center of the nation’s capital, Vilnius on 11 March. His statements to Ms. Tuskenytė include the following:

“Čekutis says that the world visions of the EU and Adolf Hitler are identical. Čekutis agrees with neo-Nazis on another issue: that there was no Holocaust. The Lithuanian Nationalist Center chairman says that the victims from all countries in World War II need to be counted, and that most of them lost the same amount of people as the Jews who were murdered. He also explains that the figure of victims in the millions is nothing more than a myth created for contemporary Jews to receive different kinds of compensation from different countries.”

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A far right organization in Lithuania today published a list of enemies, comprising liberals, tolerance-advocating authors, gay rights activists and a poet who is an official advisor to the Jewish Community of Lithuania (English translation here).

One of the organization’s leaders is a ‘chief specialist’ at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center which is one of the engines of Holocaust Obfuscation and the Double Genocide movement in the European Parliament. He was one of the leaders of last March’s state-authorized neo-Nazi parade through central Vilnius.




Ričardas Čekutis, the ‘chief specialist’ at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center who was one of the leaders of last March’s neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius, and is also a leader of the ultranationalist ‘Lithuanian National Center’, denied that any of the LNC’s members who were arrested on 22 July had any involvement in the hoisting of Nazi flags on a hill overlooking central Vilnius on Hitler’s birthday on 20 April.

Speaking to Baltic News Service, Mr Čekutis confirmed that initially two of the Lithuanian National Center’s members were detained by police on Friday morning 22 July on suspicion of involvement in the April incident.

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Ričardas Čekutis, ‘specialist’ at the state-sponsored Genocide Center in central Vilnius (center, with megaphone) was one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi march on March 11th.  Photo: Anarchija.lt.

Lithuania’s mainstream news portal, Delfi.lt, today published an article (English here) by Ričardas Čekutis, a ‘chief specialist’ at the state-sponsored Genocide Center in central Vilnius. Mr Čekutis was one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi march held on the Lithuanian capital’s main boulevard on March 11th, with a permit from city authorities and the participation of a member of parliament. Eyewitness report here. Afterwards, he embarked on a public antisemitic campaign, in addition to defending the neo-Nazi march in an earlier Delfi.lt article. He proudly displayed a homophobic symbol when he ran for office in municipal elections.

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Ričardas Čekutis, the Chief Public Relations Specialist at the state-funded Genocide Research Center who was a leader of the March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march on the main boulevard of the Lithuanian capital, and was formerly a top parliamentary aide to a Liberal (!) MP, gave a further ‘charming interview’ on April 24th  to Diena.lt.

SEE EARLIER REPORT

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A high official of the Genocide Research Center, Ričardas Čekutis, today published an article defending the recent neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius. Lithuania’s major daily, Lietuvos rytas, had identified him ten days ago as one of the key participants and organizers of the 1000-strong March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march that proceeded through the center of Vilnius on the country’s Independence Day, with the participation of a member of parliament, and a permit from the municipality of Vilnius. The Jewish Community of Lithuania has protested the march on its own website (English translation here).

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“Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania”

13 August 2010


O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

Images by Richard Schofield (© R. Schofield)

Didžioji Street 17/1, Vilnius

 

UPDATES:

A ‘chief specialist’ of the Genocide Center participated in the March 2011 (and 2012 and 2013) neo-Nazi parades, and then went on to make antisemitic statements to the press.  His July 2011 article in the mainstream media. As of Summer 2012, he is still a ‘chief specialist’ at the Center.

A revelatory gem from the Genocide Center’s website:

“Remembering the parallel with homicide, it could be said, that one may cut off all four of a person’s limbs and he or she will still be alive, but it is enough to cut off the one and only head to send him or her to another dimension. The Jewish example clearly indicates that this is also true about genocide. Although an impressive percentage of the Jews were killed by the Nazis, their ethnic group survived, established its own extremely national state and continuously grew stronger. Therefore, although a huge percentage of killed group members may indicate the cruelty of the oppressor, more complicated methods are needed to estimate the real results of genocide for the group as the entity.”

SEE ALSO:

DH SECTION ON THE GENOCIDE CENTER

Individual pages of DefendingHistory.com are dedicated to unraveling various aspects of the revisionist history campaign now underway in Europe. It is not always easy to disentangle the interlocking components. They include: trying to replace the history of the Holocaust with a new model of ‘Two Equal Genocides’ (Soviet and Nazi) in resolutions before the European parliament; the establishment of state-sponsored commissions to carry out the campaigns to get this done, even while convincing western organizations that the ‘new’ Holocaust studies incorporated within this paradigm are legitimate.

The Genocide Center is responsible for the historical misrepresentations and antisemitic exhibits at the Genocide Museum (and its new “Holocaust room”) in central Vilnius, and at Gruto Parkas near Druskininkai.

But there is also the disturbing issue of discrepancy between the ‘for export’ versions and what is on offer domestically on the ground. At major institutions in certain East European capitals, the impression is given that there was in fact only one genocide in Eastern Europe, and that it was the Soviet one, a notion frequently accompanied by antisemitic mischaracterizations of Soviet crimes as largely or primarily Jewish.

This is particularly evident at the Museum of Genocide Victims on the main boulevard of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and at the Gruto Parkas (Lenin Statue Park) tourist complex near Druskininkai.  Features common to both include (a) diminution or elimination of the Holocaust from the history formally presented to the public and tourists; (b) open antisemitism and disdain for Holocaust victims, survivors and anti-Nazi resistance fighters, and (c) a pro-fascist ambiance that extends, unbelievably, to glorification of perpetrators of genocide as long as they were in someone’s sense ‘anti-Soviet’. On this last point, see now the valiant July 2010 essay by Lithuanian author and humanist Tomas Venclova, and the courageous statement issued in September 2010 by the Jewish Community of Lithuania.

Does the Genocide Center attempt to whitewash Nazi war criminals (instead of investigating their crimes)?

Two further distressing aspects have come into play in recent years, in a way wholly unanticipated. First, the efforts to criminalize and prosecute Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance. Second, the introduction of new laws to criminalize opinions that differ from the new ‘Truth’ about history that states in the region (not only Lithuania!) are attempting to legislate. It has taken time for news of these sometimes opaque developments to adequately filter through, but at last, there is growing awareness and opposition in Western democratic and Jewish circles to the targeting of survivors, to the state commissions, and to the European Parliament campaign to ‘equalize’ Nazi and Soviet crimes. None of these Western responses try to diminish the genuine need to educate the West about the horrendous Soviet crimes and occupation from which the nations of Eastern Europe suffered so much.

The vexed issue of motives is sometimes linked to contemporary regional antisemitism (which in 2010 included judicial decisions in favor of swastika displays). Sometimes, it is seen to be an ultranationalist attempt to obfuscate and relativize the huge voluntary participation by ‘anti-Soviet patriots’ in the actual murder of virtually the entire Jewish population in LithuaniaLatvia and Estonia. Some (certainly not all) of the revisionist efforts here in Lithuania have been coordinated from one control center in central Vilnius: the state-sponsored Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania. Housed in a handsome building in Vilnius’s prestigious Old Town  (website here), it is the provider of historic information and texts for display to both the Genocide Museum and Gruto Parkas (where its texts stand as state’s historic fact despite the park’s privatization). It has its own ‘Special Investigations Department‘ and works closely with prosecutors and with parliament. Various politicians have held high positions in the Genocide Center.

Question of the Month:

The Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania reports on its website on the work of its Special Investigations Department.

Question: Does this department have any connection to the ongoing and shameful ‘investigations’ of Jewish Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance and are heroes of the free world?



History has its ironies, and an old building its secrets. It so happens that the Genocide Center’s headquarters stands at the site of one of the gates of the (‘small’) Vilna Ghetto, located in the medieval Jewish Quarter area, moments from the Gaon of Vilna’s place of residence. These winding streelets constituted an epicenter of East European Jewish civilization for centuries. But inside this ghetto gate, set up in September 1941, thousands of the city’s Jewish citizens were incarcerated in preparation for genocide in a matter of weeks (distinct from the ‘large’ ghetto that was liquidated two years later, in 1943).

We are at the corner of Didžioji (Yiddish Breyte gas; ‘Broad Street’) and the narrow winding Stiklių Street (Yiddish Glezer gesl; ‘Glazier Street’). In fact, the gate to the ghetto was affixed right to this building’s wall. The angle in the wall marks the spot. The people outside the gate were free. Those on the inside were slated for genocide because they were Jewish. But this ‘detail’ is not mentioned on the building of this research center dedicated to — genocide in Lithuania. The precise spot is visible on the Yiddish map from Vilna Ghetto times, where the thick black line is the ghetto boundary. Most of the building (lower right hand corner of the map) borders the last yards of free Vilna at this gate, with the final portion, from the kink in the wall to the end, flush against the start of the Vilna Ghetto area. Below it, a zoom-in of the building itself.


The kink in the wall marks the spot. The ghetto gate was affixed to the wall of this building (it is thought) right at or very near the angled meeting of the two sections. Incarceration for genocide to one side. Freedom of the ‘superior’ races on the other. A spot that seems, very sadly, not to be deemed worthy of historic marking by the building’s present occupants: the Genocide and Resistance Research Center.


The plot thickens. The building now housing the Genocide Center is pivotal in the historic narrative of the Vilna Ghetto. It is where the Nazis staged the ‘Great Provocation’ of 31 August 1941 — the alleged shooting of a German soldier — that was used as the pretext for the immediate murder of around eight thousand Jewish citizens, followed within a week by the herding of all the city’s Jews into the two ghettos in early September. It is the building from which an alleged shooter was dragged and beaten. Herman Kruk wrote in his diary:

‘On the corner of [Wielka = Didžioji, Breyte gas] and Glezer Streets, a shot was heard. They say a German was wounded. Soon there was a commotion, and someone pointed to a Jew from a house on that corner of Glezer and Wielka Streets, as the one who must have shot the German. People soon appeared there; the Jew was beaten horribly, everything was thrown out of his house, and a pogrom against Jewish property spread over Glezer and Jatkowa Streets. This did not finish the game. At night, they started driving the tenants out of their apartments. This goes on today, too.’ [excerpt of entry for Tuesday, 2 September 1941]

from: Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Edited and introduced by Benjamin Harshav. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Yivo and Yale University Press: New Haven & London 2002, p. 83.

Immediately following the alleged shooting of a German soldier on Glezer Street on Sunday 31 August 1941, and the accusation against a Jewish resident of the building that is today the Genocide Center, some eight thousand Jews were arrested, taken to Lukishki Prison and from there to Ponar (Paneriai) and murdered. Within a week the ‘retaliatory measures’ included the incarceration of all the city’s Jews in the first (large) and second (small) ghettos. This trilingual notice (German, Lithuanian, Polish) released by the Gestapo on Monday 1 September 1941 announced collective responsibility of the Jewish people for the shooting. Genocide of Vilna’s Jewry was underway. Image from Leyzer Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, NY 1974, vol. II, p. 432). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (NY).


The abrupt murder of eight thousand citizens leads to stacks of ownerless property in town. The Gestapo rapidly followed up with this public order (Nr. 4 on 1 Sept. 1941), this time in German and Lithuanian, ordering the ‘registration’ of the abandoned Jewish property in Vilna. Image from Leyzer Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, NY 1974, vol. II, p. 432). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (NY).


What then is today’s message of the Genocide Center to the outside world? After many protests, a single title containing the word Holocaust (a booklet by a local historian) was finally added to the pantheon of weighty tomes, nearly all of them on Soviet crimes. The horrific crimes of the communist regime obviously need to be exposed and studied, but not as a ruse for distorting or deleting the Holocaust, and not under the spurious title of Genocide in an establishment dedicated to that very topic, here at ground zero of the East European Holocaust. Bizarrely, this is an establishment that seems to want to downgrade the genocide that actually took place in the country. Below, the publications on display in the center’s windows.


An image of this corner (start of Glezer gesl) from before the war, from Leyzer Ran’s Jerusalem of Lithuania (NY 1974, vol. I, p. 68). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (New York City).


Then and now: Juxtaposition of the prewar image with the same spot today (© R. Schofield).





Some Simple and Constructive Solutions to the Irksome “Jewish Issues” that Continue to Haunt the Lithuanian Government and Its Agencies

NOTE: The original (2009) version of this document was constructed in close cooperation with the late Dr. Shimon Alperovich (1928-2014), elected head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania for many years. Revisions were discussed with him in detail until several days before his death in 2014.  Naturally, he does not bear responsibility for the document’s annual updates since that time but his intellectual imprint on its spirit should not go uncredited.

1

Abandonment of the state’s financing of the campaign to obfuscate the Holocaust by means of its Double Genocide campaign, including “cooked” international events, conferences, film screenings and panel discussions; withdrawal of formal state support for the Prague Declaration and similar projects, closing down of the “red-brown commission” and the inauguration of an atmosphere of full freedom for citizens and organizations to support alternatives including the Seventy Years Declaration. Holocaust history to be included in historically accurate proportionality in the Genocide Museum and all relevant tourist locations that deal with genocide. Abandonment of the extensive  state sponsored program to glorify the local Holocaust perpetrators of 1941, including the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF), whose leaflets indicated desire to murder the country’s Jewish citizens even before arrival of Nazi forces. Rapid correction of the mischaracterization of the early local perpetrators as supposedly heroic rebels in the new basement room on the Holocaust in the Genocide Museum.

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NEO-NAZI MARCHES  |  VILNIUS MARCHES  |  HUMAN RIGHTS  |  EVENTS

EYEWITNESS REPORT

VILNIUS—Today’s neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius had fewer participants than in earlier years, with most estimates putting a cap of 500 on the number. Many were supporters of far-right presidential candidate Arvydas Juozaitis, and made use of his associated symbol and slogan translating “Lithuania is here.” But the black skull-and-crossbones flag with the “Lithuanian swastika” (with added lines) at the top corner was at the front or center of the proceedings from their start at Cathedral Square to their conclusion with some speeches at Lukiskes Square. Former Genocide Center official Ricardas Cekutis was on hand.  There were some organized shouts of “Lietuva Lietuviams” (‘Lithuania for Lithuanians’). The following are some images of the event, which was monitored by Defending History’s correspondent Julius Norwilla and editor Dovid Katz. See Mr. Norwilla’s photo gallery for more photos.

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29 December 2015

TALI FARKASH IN YNET:

Israeli Holocaust Researchers Concerned by Politicians’ Cave-in to East European “Holocaust Tricks”

INCLUDING REDEFINITION OF GENOCIDE; GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS AS “FREEDOM FIGHTERS”; AND CAMPAIGN OF REPUTATION DESTRUCTION AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS WHO JOINED THE ANTI-NAZI RESISTANCE

SEE ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE

And will Israel ask, howsoever gently, for public apologies for the three Israeli citizens defamed for history by Lithuania’s prosecutors? All three are heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance in the forests of Lithuania, and two are heroes of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Yitzhak Arad (who has spoken out in Defending History) is still defamed on prosecutors’ website [as PDF]  and by a “Human Rights [!] Association”. Hopes rising for 2016 that the Israeli Embassy in Vilnius will rapidly obtain public apologies to the Israeli citizens Yitzhak AradRachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Joseph Melamed.

Suspense growing on whether Vilnius’s Israeli Embassy will provide cover for the renewed international meeting of the long-dormant “Red Brown Commission” that is scheduled for 17-19 March 2016. Will Yad Vashem legitimize the event? Israeli Holocaust survivors begged Yad Vashem to keep its distance. Commission members include the Genocide Center veteran who launched the campaign of defamation against Yitzhak Arad.  Dr. Arad’s analysis of the commission and its policies. The commission’s concept of Holocaust studies

2009 speech of the late Ambassador of Israel to Lithuania & Latvia HE Chen Ivri Apter. Back then it was clear that Israel could build terrific relations without betraying Israeli citizens, Holocaust survivors, history of the Holocaust, or the integrity of Jewish cemeteries in post-Holocaust Europe.

In September 2015, during his trip to Israel, the Lithuanian prime minister reported back home with triumph that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quite happy with plans for a $25,000,000 national conference center in the middle of the old (15th century origin) Piramónt (Šnipiškės) Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. But did the Israeli PM really reject out-of-hand the growing  international Jewish (and non-Jewish) chorus of condemnation for a plan to have convention revelers clap, cheer, sing, drink in bars and use toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves including some of the foremost Jewish scholars of the last millennium? Where his own ancestors are buried? Perhaps there has been some misunderstanding. Background on the cemetery’s history and implications of the case for all Europe, and on the current project.

SEVEN SOLUTIONS TO LITHUANIAN-JEWISH ISSUES

ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE         ISRAEL SECTION         DH BY COUNTRY


 24 December 2015

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė Calls on Police and Politicians Alike to Take Racism Seriously

More from Vilma Fiokla Kiurė on Roma, Human Rights, and Antisemitism


 18 December 2015 

Most Lithuanian Citizens Not Aware that State-Sponsored “Genocide Center” (GC) is the only (?) Gov. Body in the EU in the Business of Glorifying Holocaust Collaborators

Defending History led the way in 2010 with page and section exposing the GC (which runs the city-center “Genocide Museum”)

NEW: ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS REPLIES TO GENOCIDE CENTER’S NEW ATTEMPT TO “FIX” HOLOCAUST RECORD OF KAZYS ŠKIRPA

Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė Asks Why State Body Distorts History; Appeal by Sergejus Kanovičius

GRANT ARTHUR GOCHIN, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER, JEWISH STUDENT UNION, AND JEWISH COMMUNITY LEADER RESPOND TO GC’S RECENT EFFORTS TO “FIX” HOLOCAUST RECORD OF JONAS NOREIKA.

VILNIUS STILL BOASTS STREET NAMES AND SHRINES HONORING HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS. WILL THE NEW MAYOR CHANGE THINGS?

Genocide Center veteran who launched the campaign against Holocaust survivors is now a member of the state’s “Red-Brown Commission”

DEFENDING HISTORY WRITER EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS (WHO ALERTED ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD TO NOREIKA MONUMENTS IN 2012) IS REPEATEDLY LUGGED INTO COURT FOR HIS ARTICLES  PROTESTING GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS AND NEO-NAZI MARCHES. COME SUPPORT HIM AT THE NEXT HEARING: THURSDAY 21 JANUARY 2016 AT VILNIUS COUNTY COURT (LAISVĖS PROSPEKTAS 79A, ROOM 019) AT 1:30 PM (13:30)


December 2015

Defending Holocaust History Against the New Revisionism:

Reviews of Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth by

Michael Pinto-Duschinsky; Richard J. Evans (2); Tina Jennings; Walter Laqueur 

RELATED: RESPECTFULLY DISAGREEING WITH PROF. SNYDER

9 December 2015

Neo-Nazis Target Defending History Authors who Attended Private Vilnius Hanukkah Party; Will Police Investigate?

Assault follows publication of Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė’s new critique of the Genocide Center,  published in DH; Neo-Nazi blogger “Zeppelinus”, Lithuania’s top online purveyor of racism, misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism, is alleged to be a high official in the Economy Ministry

———

Meanwhile, “Genocide Center” Turns to Antisemitic Slurs in Reply to Critics of its Sanitization of Holocaust Perpetrators

Grant Arthur Gochin in VilNews.com  ◊  Defending History section on the Genocide Center (plus page)  ◊  2015 debate over J. Noreika  ◊  One of many perpetrators glorified by state agencies (plus section)  ◊  Hopes rising that Yad Vashem will finally sever ties with “Red-Brown Commission” where its presence legitimizes the G-Center  ◊  Lithuania issues facing Israel today (Israel page)  ◊  Last Litvak Holocaust survivors begged Yad Vashem not to renew the legitimizing alliance…

Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas (who in 2012 launched the international discussion on the state honors for Noreika) continues to be lugged into court on a regular basis in malicious time-wasting actions apparently intended to deter other dissenters on the policy of glorifying collaborators. More below. Section on free speech and democracy. Indirect consequences of the 2010 “double genocide” law.

ALSO: A SECOND CASE PURSUED OVER “DEFAMATION” OF ANOTHER ALLEGED COLLABORATOR; KRISTINA SULIKIENE COMMENTS.

———

COME AND SUPPORT EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS THURSDAY 21 JANUARY 2016 AT VILNIUS COUNTY COURT (LAISVĖS PROSPEKTAS 79A, ROOM 019) AT 1:30 PM (13:30)

30 Nov 2015 lite

Left to right: Evaldas Balčiūnas, Milan Chersonski and Darius Pocevičius on Monday 30 Nov. 2015 after another “totally time-wasting” hearing in the case against Balčiūnas and Pocevičius for their articles condemning fascism and the adulation of Holocaust collaborators. A more substantial hearing is now promised for Thursday 10 December, 3:30 PM (15:30), as ever at Vilnius District Court at Laisves prospektas 79a. Hopefully at long last human rights and free speech advocates, and opponents of Holocaust falsification will come to monitor. They are still looking for a pro bono human rights lawyer. For background (for English readers) please see Evaldas’s articles (and the legal harassment he has been enduring) by scrolling to the end and surveying chronologically (upwards) his articles exposing the glorification of Holocaust collaborators.

16 November 2015

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė Appeals for Gov. Action on Roma in Lithuania

“It just can’t be left to the local NGOs!”


November 2015

LIVING YIDDISH CULTURE IN VILNIUS

The Vilna Yiddish Literary Reading Circle, in its 17th year, meets weekly in termtime at the Jewish Cultural and Information Center on Mėsinių Street (Yátkever gas) in the Old Town.  Everybody welcome! Admission free.

Hanukkah in Vilnius: Dovid Katz in the Lithuania Tribune


2 November 2015

Vytautas Landsbergis, Hero of Lithuanian Independence, Shocks Many with “Defense” of Holocaust Perpetrator Jonas Noreika

Icon of freedom struggle now attacks journalist Rimvydas Valatka (who supported a petition last summer for removal of a Vilnius shrine to the Nazi collaborator) and Defending History regular Evaldas Balčiūnas (for asking why Lithuania honors such Nazist figures). Balčiūnas’s rapid reply. Earlier DH appraisal of Landsbergis’s 21st century positions.

BACKGROUND TO THE DEBATE

IN DRAMATIC REVERSAL ON GENOCIDE CENTER, LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY CHAIRPERSON FAINA KUKLIANSKY BLASTS CENTER FOR WHITEWASHING THE HOLOCAUST COLLABORATOR. IN A HISTORIC STATEMENT (BRINGING HER INTO BROAD AGREEMENT WITH DH’S LONGSTANDING CRITIQUE) SHE ASKS WHAT KIND OF “HOLOCAUST EDUCATION” CAN PROCEED IN SUCH A CONTEXT. JEWISH STUDENT LEADER AMIT BELAITĖ SPEAKS OUT WITH SINGULAR COURAGE.


 NEW IN NOVEMBER 2015:

QUESTION IN UK PARLIAMENT ON PLANNED CONVENTION CENTER IN THE OLD VILNIUS JEWISH CEMETERY

———

OUR REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF VILNIUS ON A BIZARRE OLYMPICS OF BARBARISM


 21 October 2015

Defending the History Brings Results

I

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS STRIKES DOWN A BALTIC “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” LAW

LEGAL JUDGMENT, OVERTURNING LITHUANIAN CONVICTION OF A POSTWAR SOVIET CRIMINAL OF “GENOCIDE” IS MAJOR BLOW TO EAST EUROPEAN FAR-RIGHT “PRAGUE DECLARATION” PRINCIPLE OF “EQUALITY” OF NAZI AND SOVIET CRIMES.

DOUBLE GENOCIDE MOVEMENT’S “HIGHER PURPOSES” IN MUCH OF EASTERN EUROPE INCLUDE DOWNGRADE OF THE HOLOCAUST AND GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS (SAMPLE STREET NAMES / PUBLIC SHRINES).

ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION BY DOUBLE GENOCIDE PRACTITIONERS REMAINS A CONCERN IN EASTERN EUROPE.  REPORT IN THE JERUSALEM POST.

Ornament (transparent)

II

European Union Says NO to Support for “Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery”

Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission:

“Contrary to reports in some Lithuanian newspapers and international media, the planned renovation project at the Vilnius Snipisek cemetery is not supported by European Union funds”

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION MOUNTING

Ornament (transparent)

III

Vilnius Municipality Inaugurates Ona Shimaite Street, Named for Famed Holocaust Rescuer, in the Old City


October 2015

DEFENDING HISTORY WAS THERE SO YOU CAN READ EYEWITNESS REPORTS AND OPINIONS RIGHT HERE

Reports from: Butrimánts (Butrimonys)Rákishok (Rokiškis); Shádov (Šeduva); Šiauliai (Shavl); and Svintsyán (Švenčionys); in Kaunas for Chiune Sugihara; remembering Lietukis Garage

And in Vilnius: Ponár memorial ceremony; launch of the new Ona Shimaite Street; Yivo 90th anniversary conference; conference on antisemitism (plus: reply to neo-Nazis’ reaction to our report); Ruta Vanagaite’s conference on Holocaust issues; Rothschild Conference on Jewish Cemeteries: preview and postview (but no eyewitness report — DH not allowed in to “sealed” event)


29 October 2015

 Triumphant Press Release on Conclusion of Rothschild’s Jewish Cemeteries Conference Whitewashes Lithuanian Gov. Plan to Desecrate Old Jewish Cemetery with $25,000,000 Convention Center

KAUNAS RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY ISSUES PROTEST

UPDATE: ROTHSCHILD FOUNDATION ASPECTS (DH SECTION)

One-Sided Conference had Nobody to Represent Second Opinion; Massive International Opposition Remained Terra Incognita to Delegates

Conference press release invokes summaries of views of major foreign heritage specialists who took part in the conference. But their own statements awaited. Click here for a directory of opponents, including Holocaust survivors, heritage specialists and others in Vilnius whom delegates would have enjoyed hearing out.

The official conference summary wholly omits what is actually planned for the site: a $25,000,000 convention center where tens of thousands will cheer, clap, drink at bars and use toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves spanning half a millennium (not the treatment given to Lithuanian Christian cemeteries where thousands of great scholars are buried). It is potentially the worst state-sponsored cemetery desecration in recent history. Observations of chief rabbi, EU president, protestant pastor, Vilna Holocaust survivor, Jewish resident, Kaunas synagogueLitvak rabbis’ groups, and groups representing thousands of others.

What the chief rabbi said, and why he was recently dismissed. Why did the conference not hear from him too (even by skype)? Old Vilna humor returns with a vengeance as authorities look for a new chief rabbi who needs to have a most unusual qualification for the job.  More here.

OPPOSITION     PAPER TRAIL     HIGH INTRIGUE      DH SECTION      EU ASPECTS

22 October 2015

Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė Completes Official Visit to Israel

LITHUANIA TRIBUNE / DELFI;   JERUSALEM POST

 Hopes Dashed She Would Announce Cancellation of  “Vilnius Convention Center in the Old Jewish Cemetery” and Promise to Remove Public Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators

Leading international NGO dedicated to Jewish cemetery preservation appealed directly to Lithuania’s president after her moving visit to Yad Vashem (in Matzav.com)

President intimated to questioner that neo-Nazi marches in major cities don’t use Nazi symbols. Is the swastika (legalized in Lithuania in 2010) a Nazi symbol? See eyewitness reports and photos of recent years’ marches. But does the president sing a different tune to local journalists?

ISRAELI HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS AND THEIR FAMILIES HOPED ISRAEL WOULD POLITELY BRING UP THE URGENT NEED FOR APOLOGIES TO DEFAMED SURVIVORS AND PARTISAN HEROES, INCLUDING THREE OF ITS OWN CITIZENS: YITZHAK ARAD; JOSEPH MELAMED; AND RACHEL MARGOLIS (1921-2015)

SEVEN AREAS OF LITHUANIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS REQUIRING OPEN DISCUSSION, NOT SWEEPING UNDER THE CARPET

SHE BROUGHT ALONG ECONOMY MINISTER: DID ANY JOURNALIST ASK HIM IF COUNTRY’S TOP ANTISEMITIC, RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC BLOG-ARTIST IS STILL HIGH OFFICIAL AT THE MINISTRY?  (SAMPLES)

EDITOR’S COMMENT ON EVE OF PRESIDENT’S VISIT
ISRAEL ISSUES PAGE         ISRAEL SECTION         DH BY COUNTRY

October 2015 

FALLOUT CONTINUES FROM 30 SEPTEMBER ANTISEMITISM CONFERENCE IN VILNIUS

Jerusalem Post.   Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson.   Defending History’s preview and eyewitness report / op-ed (Russian translation).  Vilma Fiokla Kiurė’s op-ed.

Neo-Nazi Blogger “Zeppelinus” reacts to DH report.   Who is he?   Seems he hasn’t liked our editor for a while now.   But is the nation’s major purveyor of racist, antisemitic, misogynist, and homophobic hate really a high official at the Ministry of the Economy?

SAMPLES OF HIS “ART”…      MORE SAMPLES…

 ◊

October 2015 

Chaim Bargman, Noted Jewish History Guide from Kaunas, is Prevented by Police from Attending Holocaust Commemoration Ceremony

INCIDENT OCCURRED AT UKMERGĖ (VÍLKOMIR), WHERE BARGMAN AND COMPANION WERE HEADING FOR COMMEMORATION AT FOREST MASS GRAVE FOR UP TO TEN THOUSAND JEWS OF THE REGION SLAUGHTERED IN 1941.  DISTURBINGLY, THE TOWN CONTINUES TO DEDICATE A SQUARE TO THE MEMORY OF A NOTORIOUS HOLOCAUST PERPETRATOR.

Our Report     Video of Bargman’s Statement     Julia Rets’s Report (in Russian)


2 October 2015

Litvaks Everywhere Mark the Gaon of Vilna’s 218th Yórtsayt

Eylióhu ben Shlèyme-Zálmen (Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, 1720−1797)

19 Tíshrey 5776  /  2 October 2015;  Some background reading


1 October 2015

Vilnius Conference on “Antisemitism, Radicalization and Violent Extremism” Includes Nothing on Current Issues of Antisemitism in Lithuania or Discussion of Solutions

YET ANOTHER EEA SPONSORED “JEWISH LITHUANIA” EVENT WITHOUT A SINGLE LITHUANIAN BORN JEW IN ATTENDANCE

Jerusalem Post

Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson

Defending History’s Preview and Eyewitness ReportVilma Fiokla Kiurė’s Report

Neo-Nazi Blogger “Zeppelinus” reacts to DH report. Who is he? Seems he hasn’t liked our editor for quite some timeDH’s reply

One of the keynote morning speakers (amateur video) at the 30 Sept. conference, known for his documentary films that ignore the alleged Holocaust atrocities of “heroes” as well as for his incessant Israel-baiting (and of late association with far-right antisemitic Ukrainian nationalists), proposes solving Mideast issues and local antisemitism at once by “bringing the Palestinians to Vilnius, Jerusalem of the North” [!]. Israeli ambassador boldly calls him out (see from timecode 13:17) for “rewriting history” of Israel’s struggles. The organizer, the “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” has record of ignoring antisemitism and failing to even mildly protest neo-Nazi marches in city centers on independence days or the abuse of prosecutorial power to harass Lithuanian truth-tellers about the Holocaust and local antisemitism.

CONFERENCE FEATURED EXCELLENT PRESENTATIONS ON HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN GENERAL, ANTISEMITISM IN GENERAL, AND ISSUES OF ISLAMIST RADICALIZATION IN WESTERN EUROPE. DANGERS OF THE FAR RIGHT DISCUSSED BY SPEAKERS FROM HUNGARY AND NORWAY, IGNORED OR PLASTERED OVER FOR LITHUANIA.

SEE HUMAN RIGHTS SECTIONS


22 September 2015

Vilnius Mayor Unveils Street Name for City’s Beloved Holocaust Rescuer, Ona Šimaitė

Simaite Street sign for p1

Ona Simaite, Maskva apie 1920 m.


22 September 2015

Ponár (Paneriai) Commemoration on Lithuania’s Annual Holocaust Day is Dejudaicized Even More in “Nationalist Takeover of Litvak Heritage”: No Rabbi, No Cantor, No Kaddish

But ethnic Lithuanian costume and song are featured at the mass grave of Vilna Jewry. Honor guard with bayoneted rifles was a questionable touch.

There were well-received speeches by (among others) Jewish community chairperson Faina Kukliansky; MP Emanuelis Zingeris; survivor and partisan hero Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky; and president of Beit Vilna in Tel Aviv, Mickey Kantor. There was a well-organized laying of stones by schoolchildren at the main monument.

The Israeli ambassador’s speech was considered a disappointment by some survivors in attendance. There was no mention of the recent death of Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015), an Israeli-Lithuanian citizen, and Vilna Ghetto and anti-Nazi partisan hero. She discovered and published Kazimierz Sakowicz’s long lost eyewitness diary revealing the gruesome truth about Ponár. She dreamt of one last trip to her native Vilna but was intimidated by the prosecutors’ campaign of defamation against her and other Jewish partisan heroes. It was a sharp and painful contrast with the stirring and unforgettable words of the late Israeli ambassador to the Baltics, Chen Ivri Apter. Margolis’s life was considered worthy of note by, among many others, Lithuania’s late president, Algirdas Brazauskas, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown, the ADL’s Abraham Foxman, the late Sir Martin Gilbert, a British House of Lords member, and five members of the US Congress.


20 September 2015 

ON-SITE REPORT ON YIVO CONFERENCE IN VILNIUS


Sept-Oct 2015

The Old Jewish Cemetery Gets Pretty Lively in Vilnius

dance-on-grave

“Only conventions here, with bars, entertainment and toilets. But no concerts allowed! The Jewish graves all around make a cool backdrop for our 2018 national centennial holiday!”

Prime Minister, Assuring that Convention-Center-on-the-Jewish-Cemetery Will Feature “Conventions, Not Concerts” Wants Project to Mark Centennial of Nation’s Independence

RECENT REPORTS IN JERUSALEM POSTJTA, TIMES OF ISRAEL, i24

MAJOR NEW ESSAY BY PROFESSOR SIDNEY LEIMAN

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION COMES FROM TOP LITVAK RABBIS, JEWISH LEADERS AND VILNIUS RESIDENTS AND SCIONS, INCLUDING HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, ORTHODOX KASHRUTH SPECIALIST, URBAN PLANNING PROFESSOR, VILNA GAON SPECIALISTCHIEF RABBI (THEREAFTER SACKED FOR HIS VIEWS) AND PROTESTANT PASTOR

PAPER TRAILOPPOSITION TO DATE ♦ HIGH INTRIGUE ♦ DH SECTION ♦ WIKILEAKS ON EARLIER PAYMENTS TO THE ONE GROUP OF “AGREEABLE” HASIDIC RABBIS IN LONDON, THEMSELVES ROUNDLY OVERRULED BY THE CHIEF SATMAR COURT IN NEW YORK CITY AND THE CRC

WASHINGTON DC: WHERE IS THE “US COMMISSION FOR PRESERVING AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD”?

Ornament (transparent)

Jewish Circles in Vilnius Enjoy Wry Moment of Rarefied Litvak Humor

IS THE COMMITTEE CHOOSING THE NEW CHIEF RABBI REALLY BOUND TO ENSURE HE WILL BE “GOVERNMENT MAN” AND SUPPORT A $25,000,000 CONVENTION CENTER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY’S OLD JEWISH CEMETERY? DE-LEGITIMIZED FROM DAY ONE?

LAST CHIEF RABBI KICKED OUT OVER THE ISSUE

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION  ♦  PAPER TRAIL  ♦  HIGH INTRIGUE  ♦  RECENT REPORTS IN THE JERUSALEM POST, JTA AND TIMES OF ISRAEL

Professor Sid Leiman explains Jewish law on cemeteries and gives sweeping history of Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery and the repeated attempts to abuse its land.  He is author of the classic study on who is buried in the Gaon of Vina’s mausoleum and is a world expert on Vilna’s Jewish heritage who has generously assisted projects in Lithuania’s Jewish community for decades.


15 September 2015

Israel Faced Some Delicate Post-Holocaust Issues During Lithuanian PM’s September Visit

Efraim Zuroff asked in the Jerusalem Post that the Baltic state’s campaign to revise Holocaust history — and its plans to plonk a convention center in the middle of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery — be on the table; Zuroff’s post-visit article in i24

INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION TO “CONVENTION CENTER IN THE JEWISH CEMETERY”

PAPER TRAIL

ISRAEL PAGE

ISRAEL SECTION

7 SOLUTIONS

AFTER MEETING NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER BUTKEVICIUS GLOATS TO MEDIA THAT ISRAEL DOESN’T OBJECT TO THE “GRAVEYARD CONVENTION CENTER” DESPITE INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION; JTA REPORT; IN THE JERUSALEM POST

CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEWISH PARTISANS NOT EVEN MENTIONED? Does Israel betray its own citizens by not asking apologies for the World War II heroes Yitzhak Arad, (the late) Rachel Margolis and  Joseph Melamed? Arad and Melamed are heroes of Israel’s 1948 war of independence.  Will there now be a public apology on the prosecutors’ page that still defames him [as PDF]  and from the “Human Rights Association”? Apologies to Israeli citizens Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed? The 2009 Leivick House (Tel Aviv) speech of the late Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter. What does Dr. Arad  think?

BUT PM DECRIED “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” IN PUBLIC (JP REPORT). HE WILL HOPEFULLY FOLLOW UP AT HOME ON STREET NAMES AND PUBLIC HONORS FOR HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS [CURRENT DEBATE]; OVERDUE APOLOGIES TO JEWISH PARTISANS; RAPID REFORM OR ABOLITION OF GENOCIDE CENTER AND RED-BROWN COMMISSION — AND REPUDIATION OF THE PRAGUE DECLARATION.  NEO-NAZI PARADES ON INDEPENDENCE DAYS?

RECENT MEDIA:  Slate.  The Forward.  Jerusalem Post.  JTA.  Times of Israel.


Uri Chanooch3

URI CHANOCH

1928 — 2015

MEMORIES AND TRIBUTES ON FACEBOOK


6 September 2015

At Long Last, Rokiškis (Yiddish: Rákishok; Rákeshik), Town in Northeastern Lithuania, Erects Memorial to Aspect of Its Jewish Past

Mayor unveils plaque to 3 synagogues

Mayor unveils trilingual plaque for three (destroyed) synagogues. Before the war, they were painted in the colors of the Lithuanian flag to express civic loyalty

BUT TOWN’S CENTRAL SQUARE STILL FEATURES AN “INTERWAR SWASTIKA”


4 September 2015 

Lithuanian Postal Service Honors Sugihara and Zwartendijk on 75th Anniversary of “Visas for Life”

combo


 1 September 2015

 OPPOSITION TO PLANNED $25,000,000 VILNIUS “GRAVEYARD CONVENTION CENTER” MOUNTS BY THE DAY

Latest in JTA: in the Jerusalem Post: first, second, third article;  in Defending History;  Everywhere; A Tale of High Intrigue. But anonymous editorial on Jewish community [!?] website makes fun of those who believe cemetery’s sanctity is violated by a $25,000,000 convention center with further plans for circuses and hotels, claiming that a “garbage dump”, “drugs” and “graffiti” [?!] are the only alternatives…  Why was chief rabbi fired? Are the names Soloveitchik, Kotler, Feinstein, Kamenetzkty still dear to Litvaks? Motke Chabad on criteria for new chief rabbi

“It’s because of the Holocaust that the thousands of deceased  — spanning 500 years of Vilna Jewish history — who lie in the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (Šnipiškės) in today’s Vilnius have no descendants to stand up for the integrity of their final resting place. The cheers, hoorahs, drinks and washrooms at conventions — all surrounded by graves — would be a blister on the city’s reputation for the next century. It sure wouldn’t happen at a Christian cemetery. Is this what the mayor wants to be remembered for? Fight this one for our beautiful city Vilnius!”

INTERNATIONAL PAPER TRAIL

NEW DH SECTION

BUT GROUP OF NON-LITVAK ULTRA-ORTHODOX LONDON RABBIS issues a 1 Sept. Hebrew proclamation supporting CPJCE, signed by Rabbis E. Schlesinger; A.D. Dunner; Z. Feldman; J. Padwa; B. Bloom; E. Shechter; S. Lew; J.B. Wosner; M.C.E. Padwa. Did they understand what they were signing? Have they seen the unanimous judgments of rabbis internationally? Do they really feel comfortable blessing a convention center surrounded by thousands of Vilna Jewish graves in the face of the judgments issued by top Litvak  Rabbis Feinstein, Kotler, Kamenetsky and Soloveitchik (and remarkably, by the highest Satmar hasidic court too)? Would they wish to know about a Vilna Holocaust survivor’s view, or that of an Orthodox woman, both lifetime members of the Jewish community in Vilnius?

DEMANDS FOR TRANSPARENCY: In 2009, the CPJCE demanded US $100,000 (in supervision fees) for some “beautification” and “exploratory digging” on the old Vilna cemetery. What are their fees this time around, for supervising a $25,000,000 convention center?

A TALE OF HIGH INTRIGUE.   CHRONOLOGY OF MISADVENTURES.

APPEALS TO THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

US COMMISSION FOR PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD” MAINTAINS A DISCONCERTING SILENCE (AFTER  DOCUMENTED CONFLICTS OF INTEREST) AS LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT’S STALWARTS CLAIM TO AGAIN MANIPULATE IT (WITH DISINFORMATION?). ONE COMMISSION MEMBER JOINS DELEGATION TO NY CONSULATE TO “THANK” GOV. FOR “SAVING THE CEMETERY”. MEANWHILE, JERUSALEM POST EXPOSES PAYMENTS TO RABBIS WHO APPROVE BUILDING ON VILNA’S OLD JEWISH CEMETERY. FOLLOWED BY EXPOSURE OF “MONEY FOR GRAVES” BY JTA.

WHAT ARE THE VIEWS OF THE NEW “HERITAGE COMMISSION”? (ENG);  WHAT ARE THE VIEWS OF “THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION”?

———

Litvak Rabbis Visit Vilnius to Plea for Cancellation of Plan to Put New Convention Center in City’s Old Jewish Cemetery

They are received by deputy chancellor, mayor of Vilnius, head of Jewish Community

MEDIA:   BNS’S  “MISLEADING” REPORT ON THE RABBIS’ ACTUAL MESSAGE (BNS’S CORRECTED VERSION);  THE RABBIS’ OWN PRESS RELEASE;  REPORT IN HAPÉLES;  JERUSALEM POST;  THE YESHIVA WORLD.

They plea for a cemetery

At the meeting with Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius (right to left): Rabbi David Niederman (Central Rabbinical Congress of the USA and Canada); Rabbi Osher Kalmanowitz (dean of Mir Yeshiva, Brooklyn, N.Y.); Rabbi Avrohom Yaffe Schlesinger (chief rabbi of the Orthodox community in Geneva, Switzlerand); Rabbi Malkiel Kotler (dean of Beth Medrash Govoha, Lakewood, N.J.).

5 rabonim at the Sports Palace (25 Aug 2015)

At the old Soviet Sports Palace on the old cemetery (left to right): Rabbi Osher Kalmanowitz, Rabbi Schlesinger, Dr. Schaps, Rabbi David Niederman, Rabbi Chizki Kalmanowitz (Asra Kadisha, Jerusalem).

Litvak-Hasidic Solidarity:  Judgment by Satmar Rabbinical Court in Brooklyn (with Rebbe’s Signature) is Released for Publication after Top Litvak Rabbis in the United States (including Feinstein and Kotler) and in Israel (with Soloveitchik and Landa) Issue their Own Condemnation of Lithuanian Government’s Plan for $25,000,000 Convention Center Surrounded by Thousands of Vilna Jewish Graves

———

Chief Rabbi of Lithuania Chaim Burshtein is Dismissed Following Opposition to Government’s Convention-Center Plans for Old Jewish Cemetery

JERUSALEM POST     JTA     BNS     COMMUNITY’S WEBSITE     DEFENDING HISTORY     RABBI’S STATEMENT

NEO-NAZI ACTIVIST “ZEPPELINUS” URGES HEAD OF JEWISH COMMUNITY TO FOLLOW SUIT WITH EXPULSION OF DH EDITOR;  HIS EARLIER PRODUCTIONS;  IDENTITY;   RACIST HATE CAMPAIGN;  EARLIER IN 2015

———

THE EU DIMENSION:

European Union Spokesperson Explains that Millions in EU “Structural Funds” for “Convention Center in the Jewish Cemetery” may be Decided by Lithuania’s Finance Ministry

CEMETERY BLUES:

TALE OF HIGH INTRIGUE.  THE PAPER TRAIL.  THE NEW DH SECTION. THE MOUNTING INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION.

 ◊

Grant Arthur Gochin in the Jerusalem Post on Memorials for Holocaust Perpetrator J. Noreika in Central Vilnius

Who was Noreika?   Street Names for Nazis?   Reburials?   More Honors?

2023748827

Holocaust perpetrator as national hero?

Liberal Lithuanian intellectuals petitioning city’s mayor for removal of shrines. But nationalist media considers the very discussion to be “a Russian plot”.  Focus of debate is an obscure plaque but main Noreika shrine in the capital is towering engraved stone (above) on the “Genocide Museum” on Gedimino Boulevard, a stone’s throw from parliament.

Meanwhile, Kristina Apanavičiūtė Sulikienė reports on her efforts with mayor of Kaunas on street names for another killer. See also the Evaldas Balčiūnas section.


6 July 2015

ROKHL MARGOLIS

Vilna, 28 October 1921 — Rehovot, 6 July 2015

 צו די שלשים: ד″ר רחל מאַרגאָליס (מַרְגָלִית) ז″ל

Yiddishists in Vilnius Remember Dr. Rachel Margolis

A Yiddish appreciation from 2008: Part 1 & Part 2


Summer 2015

≡≡  NEWS  ≡≡

Daniel Brook in Slate on “Double Genocide: Lithuania Wants to Erase History of Nazi Collaboration — by Accusing Jewish Partisans who Fought the Germans of War Crimes” [PS: State Red-Brown Commission’s Stand on the Holocaust Recently Reaffirmed]

Also: Jonathan Paul Katz in the Forward

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Will Belgrade Court Rehabilitate Yugoslav Nazi Collaborator?

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Defending History Calls for Removal of Street Names and Public Shrines to Nazi Collaborators in the Baltics

Also: Sergey Kanovich in i24 on Lithuania’s Real and False Heroes

———

Czech MEP Invites Pro-Nazi Ukrainian Leader to the European Parliament

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Does the New York Times Cover for East European Holocaust Revisionism?

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Ruta Bloshtein of Vilnius Calls Convention Center Project in City’s Old Jewish Cemetery “Barbaric”

Also: Vilna Holocaust Survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg in The Times of Israel;  Ken Slade’s Poem: The “Former” Grave-Place


June 2015

 Some “Jewish Decisions” Face Vilnius’s New Mayor:

Will he remove street names, plaques and memorials for Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators?  BACKGROUND

What does he think of some parliamentarians’ efforts to make the former “Jerusalem of Lithuania” host to June 23rd 2016 75th anniversary celebrations of the effective onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust?

Is the middle of the old Jewish cemetery really the right place for the new $25,000,000 convention center?  BACKGROUND

Past encounters with Jewish and Holocaust issues (from his days as justice minister)


Spring 2015

Trix & Treats for Londoners in Vilnius?

Why did Lithuania’s Prime Minister Entertain Non-Litvak (“Galitsyáner”) Rabbis from London to “Permit” a $25,000,000 Convention Center Project in the Heart of the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

All three Vilnius rabbis were excluded from the conversation. And — an international (secular) “Heritage Commission” was set up to save Jewish cemeteries…

PM Welcomes CPJCE (2 photos)

Above: Prime Minister of Lithuania Algirdas Butkevičius welcomes London-based rabbis from CPJCE who “permitted” a  $25,000,000 convention center project for the middle of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. Below: Government’s top Jewish affairs maestro Lina Saulėnaitė entertains the delegation. PM is 3rd from left. A 2009 document refers to these rabbis being paid $100,000 for “supervising” some “beautification” and “exploratory digging” but what are they being paid this time, for “supervising” construction of the convention and entertainment center?

NEW DH SECTION ON THE OLD VILNA CEMETERY

BACKGROUND        PAPER TRAIL        MORE BELOW

SECRET 2009 DEAL?         SECRET PAYMENTS?         SECRET 2015 PP?

Who opposes the convention center project and why?

“In my view, it is a bad idea for our old cemetery to be the foundation for a convention center where people will be cheering, dancing, jumping, singing, and drinking in the convention center’s bars.”

Professor Pinchos Fridberg (Vilnius Holocaust Survivor)

“Would these building projects be pursued if the cemeteries in question were the resting places of Catholics, Protestant Christians, or other non-Jewish people?”

Pastor Michael Maass (Director of the Lithuanian Branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem)

Spring 2015

 Inspiring Voices of Courage from Lithuania

Vytenis Povilas AndriukaitisEvaldas Balčiūnas  ♦ Saulius BeržinisMilan ChersonskiAlgis Davidavičius ♦ Leonidas Donskis ♦ Pinchos FridbergVilma Fiokla KiurėRachel Kostanian ♦ Faina KuklianskyAndrius KulikauskasMichael & Fausta Maass ♦ Julius NorwillaRūta VanagaitėGeoff VasilTomas Venclova ♦ Lina Žigelytė

AND MANY MORE

Visit our AUTHORS page


June-July 20152015 

Do EU/NATO Countries in Eastern Europe Really Want to Celebrate Anniversaries of Outbreak of the Holocaust?

23 June 2016: Lithuanian Parliament Publishes MP’s Proposal for Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust as Supposed Glorious Uprising against the Soviets (who were running from the Nazis’ Barbarossa invasion, not from the Jew-killers)

Last time around (70th anniversary in 2011)  ♦ Jewish community’s reaction  ♦  Leonidas Donskis’s reaction ♦ Reburial of the “hero” in 2012   ♦ Revival of the old Liekis proposals?  ♦ All to be covered by PR Judaic-Yiddish jamborees?  ♦ This year’s official initiative comes from the Homeland Union Conservatives


July 2015

 רחל מאַרגאָליס (מַרְגָלִית) זל

Rachel Margolis

Vilna, 28 October 1921  —  Rehovot, 6 July 2015

About Rachel Margolis: Shimon AlperovichAlgirdas Brazauskas, Gordon Brown, Abraham Foxman, Steinar Gil, Martin Gilbert, Chen Ivri Apter, Dovid Katz (Y), Francois Laumonier, NCSJGeoff Vasil. UK House of Lords, 5 US Congressmen, 9 Western ambassadors in Vilnius.

Left her safe haven with righteous Christians to join her family in the Vilna Ghetto. Joined the Jewish underground anti-Nazi resistance. Witness to creation of the Yiddish partisan hymn.

Escaped to join the partisans and fought valiantly against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania. The only one in her family to survive the Holocaust.

Volunteered for the short-lived Jewish museum after the war.

Dedicated half a century to Biology, as PhD and professor, at Vilnius University.

Helped establish the Green House Holocaust museum in Vilnius. Rediscovered, deciphered and published Kazimierz Sakowicz’s diary of Ponár. Author of a remarkable memoir. Beloved guide, lecturer and teacher on Jewish Vilna and the Holocaust. A beloved lecturer at the Vilnius Summer Program in Yiddish untl prosecutors’ threats prevented her coming in 2008 and beyond. Will there be a session honoring her at this summer’s program? Will students be told about her accomplishments?

Target of a campaign of defamation by Vilnius prosecutors, the “Lithuanian Human Rights Association” and other far-right Holocaust-revisionist elites. In 2009, she was excluded from the Jerusalem Book Fair, and betrayed by Indiana University’s Bloomington-Borns Yiddish program at a Jerusalem conference exposed as sham by Prof. Dov Levin. In 2011, Yivo shunned her at its Vilna Ghetto memorial events, preferring to honor the then antisemitic foreign minister of Lithuania.

At 90, she was afraid to return to her beloved Vilna for one last visit she yearned for. The Lithuanian government refused to reach out to her, its ambassadors in Israel would not acknowledge her, while prosecutors repeated threats of kangaroo “war crimes investigation” (most recently for the record in the 2012 documentary “Rewriting History“).

The government of Lithuania forfeited a precious chance to cap the 700 year Jewish history in the country on a more noble note than police coming to look for Dr. Rachel Margolis in Vilnius

Margolis Tel Aviv 2009

Rachel Margolis (second from right) honored at Tel Aviv’s Leivick House in June 2009. From left to right: Dalia and Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter; Prof. Dov Levin; Prof. Israel Bartal; Prof. Dovid Katz; Leivick House director Daniel Galay.

VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL MARGOLIS: 1 and 2

MORE INFORMATION AND TRIBUTES:

RACHEL MARGOLIS FACT SHEET ♦ FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN ♦ 5 MEMBERS OF THE US CONGRESS ♦ ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS ♦ KEENE STATE COLLEGE ♦ SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ♦ LORD JANNER OF BRAUNSTONE ♦  LATE LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS ♦ ISRAELI AMBASSADOR CHEN IVRI APTER ♦ ADL DIRECTOR ABRAHAM FOXMAN ♦ NCSJ ♦ METRO WEST HOLOCAUST COUNCIL ♦ LEIVICK HOUSE TEL AVIV ♦ JEWISH CHRONICLE ♦ ALGEMEINER JOURNAL (& 2) ♦ RACHEL MARGOLIS.COM

OCTOBER 2012 UPDATE: VIDEO RELEASED OF THE LATE AMBASSADOR CHEN IVRI APTER’S 2009 SPEECH AT LEIVICK HOUSE, TEL AVIV

Coverage in Defending History:

OVERVIEWS HERE & HERE;  7 MAY 2008;  19 JUNE 200928 OCTOBER 2009;  27 JANUARY 2010;  28 OCTOBER 2010;  3 JANUARY 2011;  5 MAY 2011;  28 AUGUST 2011;  23 SEPTEMBER 2011.


Spring 2015

Protests Mount over $25,000,000 Convention Center Project in Heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Protestant Pastor Asks if Such a Fate Would be In Store for a Christian Cemetery? Second Pastor Calls on Vilnius Mayor to Act

Discrimination Also Noted by Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada

NEW DH SECTION ON THE OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY

A NEST OF HIGH STATE INTRIGUE?

THE PAPER TRAIL TO DATE

ONE YEAR AGO THE U.S. CONGRESS PASSED LEGISLATION PROTECTING FOREIGN CEMETERIES OF MINORITIES UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACT

BUT HAS THE U.S. COMMISSION TO PROTECT HERITAGE ABROAD NOW BEEN COMPROMISED IN THE VILNIUS CEMETERY FRACAS?

Jewish Protests Mount: Chief Rabbi of Lithuania; Holocaust Survivor in Vilnius; Vilna Gaon Synagogue in Tel Aviv; Litvak Heads of Yeshivas in Israel; Dr. Bernard Fryshman (CAPJC); Simon Wiesenthal Center.

JewishCemeteryVilnius

דער אַלטער ווילנער בית⸗עולם אויף פּיראַמאָנט, נעבעך

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תמונות ליטא 22 תמונה שליRabbi Shmuel Jacob Feffer, President of World HaGró (Gaon of Vilna) Center, Coeditor of 70 Gaon Books, Issues Rabbinic Judgment on Convention Center Plans

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Vilnius Holocaust Survivor and Protestant Pastor Speak Out


June 2015

Yet Another Book that Whitewashes the Latvian Holocaust’s Local Perpetrators

REPORT BY ROLAND BINET

Ukrainian Ultranationalists’ Poster with Swastikas & Other Hitlerist Icons in Weston-on-Trent in Derbyshire, England

REPORT BY J. NORTH

SEE ALSO:  UKRAINE UPDATES BELOW;   MEDIA TRACKER;  DH SECTION

Why is the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Afraid to Tell its Audience About the Nazi Career of its Featured Composer?

REPORT BY RONALD C. KENT

Vilnius: Right-Wing Parliamentarians Try Again to Make June 23rd — Onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust by Local “Patriots” — Into National Day of Celebration

June 23rd 2016 will mark the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Holocaust in dozens of Lithuanian towns. The Soviet army was fleeing Hitler’s invasion of 22 June 1941 (the largest invasion in human history), not the LAF murderers, but some nationalists, antisemites, Double Genociders and far-right revisionists want to turn Holocaust perpetrators into “anti-Soviet rebels.” See details from the last time around, the 70th anniversary of 2011. Defending History was there to cover it all: The events, the LAF’s intentions, the Jewish Community’s response, the government attempts to play double games. See also Brandišauskas’s classic critique of an earlier attempt by Liekis to turn the reign of Hitlerist terror into a glorious chapter of modern history.


Spring 2015 

A Regional Problem?

Some East European Elites Seem to Need to Honor Holocaust Collaborators (while wooing the West as well)

Croatia • Hungary • Latvia • Lithuania • Ukraine

MICHAEL SHAFIR’S NEW PAPER ON HOLOCAUST DEFLECTION AND OBFUSCATION

Come and Check Out Defending History BY COUNTRY

 


8 May 2015

Lithuania’s President and Entourage Lay Wreaths at Ponár on May 8th…

VIDEO

Dovid Katz in Times of Israel (11 May)

Efraim Zuroff in i24 (12 May)

“Equally” at Monuments for Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish Victims, but Skipping the Stone Commemorating the 7,514 Red Army Prisoners of Various Nationalities Starved and Murdered at the Site.

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NO WREATHS HERE. Presidential wreaths for all but this one: modest plaque in memory of 7,514 Red Army prisoners-of-war, of various nationalities, starved and murdered.

The Lithuanian monument bewreathed on May 8th is not for Lithuanian civilians or anti-Nazis, but for a group of volunteers for pro-Nazi service who were then shot for alleged desertion. The one Jewish MP paid tribute there as well.

May 8th (Western Europe) and May 9th (Eastern Europe) Commemorate the Allied Victory over Hitler in Europe. But the government’s commemoration activities offered zero mention of the sacrifices of the forces that defeated Hitler and brought an end to the genocide at Ponár.

ANOTHER SHOCK FOR VETERANS AND SURVIVORS, AND FOR OBSERVERS OF THE CAMPAIGN TO USURP THE MASS MURDER SITE OF VILNA JEWRY — AND THE HOLOCAUST — FOR CURRENT POLITICAL ENDS

But no government officials turned up at the later event commemorating Jewish partisans and war veterans at the Jewish cemetery


May 2015

Lithuanian Government’s New Jewish Heritage Commission Completes First Meeting

Sincere Efforts on Preserving Cemeteries and Mass Graves Reported; Real Progress Seen in Central Government Efforts to Overcome Local Resistance

But Painful Issues Ignored Include the Sinking Last Jewish Partisan Fort where Vilna Ghetto Survivors Defied the Nazis and their Collaborators; Humiliated Gravestones in Church Steps and School’s Garden Walls; State’s Memorials for Holocaust Collaborators

In Response to Several Commissioners’ Requests, Defending History Published List of Twelve Urgent Material Heritage Issues

Rumors in Vilnius on “PR Commission Replacement”: Defending History Campaign Challenging Red-Brown Commission Resulted in New, Commission “Replacing It” as Public Face of Gov.-Jewish Affairs; Red-Brown Commission’s Website Dark Since April 17th, as Latest Slur on Holocaust Survivors Appears on Youtube

Press Release Mentions Politically Explosive Foreigners’ Demands for Changes in Citizenship and Private Property Restitution Laws


4 May 2015

On Eve of Commission Meeting, Protestant Clergyman Called for Rapid and Dignified Removal of Church Steps Made of Looted Jewish Gravestones at Central Vilnius Church (Pylimo St. 18); Commission Silent on Issue

steps of church on pylimo

Where the way into church is to trample on looted gravestones…


3 May 2015

Rūta Vanagaitė, Lithuanian Author and Cultural Icon, Publishes Bold Article on History Education and Popular Antisemitism

Article followed her April 17 conference; Then, Vanagaitė teamed up with Jewish community’s Simon Gurevich to debate opponents on Lithuanian TV’s “The Naked Truth” on May 4. One of them was J. Panka, leader of annual neo-Nazi march in Kaunas that flaunts banner of a major Nazi collaborator.

rutaandsimonas

Rūta Vanagaitė and Simon Gurevich on Lithuanian television’s “The Naked Truth” on May 4th.


22 April 2015

Moment of Truth at Ponár

German Film Makers Release Clip from New Documentary:

Vilnius “Red-Brown Commission” Boss on Beloved Vilna Ghetto Survivor Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, in Interview at Mass Murder Site Ponár (Paneriai)

ALSO MENTIONS IN BRIEF SOME CORE PRINCIPLES OF “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” AND HIS SEARCH FOR “ALL KINDS OF PERPETRATORS

REACTION:

Efraim Zuroff says: “Do your country a favor and resign!”

Commission — officially “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes” — is a Lithuanian government sponsored unit with a record of irksome conflict.

Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja), who turns 93 next month, lost her entire family in the Holocaust. She is one of a number of Jewish partisan heroes publicly defamed by Lithuanian prosecutors for years. No charges were ever filed against any, and “investigations” were dropped in the face of international reaction. But in the absence of written apologies, defamation continues apace into the history books.

Other Holocaust survivors defamed include: Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Professor Pinchos Fridberg, Dr. Rachel Margolis, Attorney Joseph Melamed.

BUT IN SHOCK TO YIDDISH AND HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR CIRCLES, DIRECTOR OF N.Y. YIVO, FOUNDED IN VILNA 90 YEARS AGO, REMAINS A MEMBER OF THE COMMISSION, AND DEFENDS IT IN JEWISH MEDIA. OTHER FOREIGN JEWISH MEMBERS JOINED UP, AT TIMES UNDER POLITICAL PRESSURE. SOME HAVE RECEIVED PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS. A VILNA HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR APPEALED TO YIVO’S DIRECTOR IN VILNA YIDDISH (AUDIO).


April 2015

Legacy of  Rūta Vanagaitė’s April 2015 Conference at Vilnius City Hall

venclova speaks

Tomas Venclova addresses conference at Vilnius City Hall on 17 April 2015. Photo: Julius Norwilla.

CONFERENCE PAPERS, VIDEOS, PHOTOS AND MEDIA COVERAGE


9 April 2015

Joseph Levinson, 98,

Dies in Vilnius

JOSEPH LEVINSON (1917-2015)


 20 March 2015

pkfz-whitewash-070926Attempts to “Fix” Holocaust History with Far Right’s “Double Genocide” Politics?

Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg dares challenge the state-sponsored “red-brown commission” that supports the Prague Declaration. His audio recording in Vilna Yiddish of an open letter to director of Yivo in NY. Text of  full correspondence in English [DH] (+reprint [OLC]), Russian [Mi Zdes] (+ reprints in Shofar & Obzor), Yiddish [Forverts].

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 European taxpayers’ money squandered by traveling exhibits to downgrade the Holocaust by mix-n-match with Soviet crimes?  Geoff Vasil reviews exhibit.

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While a real Holocaust exhibit in Paris, for UNESCO, is vetoed by Latvia? Latest from Paris.

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Free thought in East European academia: Dissenters to “Double Genocide” dismissed, then accused of being non-academics? Coming soon: Prof. Michael Shafir’s “Deflection and Obfuscation.” Also: Times of Israel report.


16 March 2015

In the East of EU-NATO-Land: Again, Latvian Authorities Grant Riga Old Town and its “Liberty Monument” on March 16th to 1500 Worshippers of Hitler’s Waffen SS Latvian Divisions

All Waffen SS members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler, some were recycled Holocaust killers.  Lithuania’s far-right leaders J. Panka and R. Čekutis, fresh from neo-Nazi march in Vilnius, were on hand as honored guests; British neo-Nazis came for the event. For the second year in a row, the prime minister forbade ministers from attending. The antisemite who went around seeking Jewish observers to “enlighten” them (video).

Top left: Sea of flowers placed at Liberty Monument to honor Waffen SS. Top right: throng marches through historic old town. Bottom from left: heavy police presence; an antisemitic poster distributed by one of the event’s supporters.

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff leads a silent, peaceful protest of Just 2 (SWC and Defending History)

But his words at event are reported around the globe (including ABC News, Arutz Sheva, London Daily Mail, Der Spiegel, Wall Street JournalWashington Post, Yahoo News). SWC’s statement.  Photo gallery by Delfi.lv.

Dr. Zuroff’s one-month odyssey took him to all four far-right or pro-Nazi events in the Baltics: Kaunas Feb 16, Tallinn Feb 24, Vilnius March 11, and Riga March 16.

Top: Dr. Efraim Zuroff is besieged by a throng of media. Bottom:  He and Dovid Katz made for an on-site protest of just 2; Famous Latvian Jewish tour guide and genealogist Alex Feigmanis makes an appearance too.

Separate protest by “Latvia Without Nazism” was allowed after event’s conclusion, with members carrying symbolic fumigation gear to Liberty Monument after Waffen SS admirers’ departure.  Monica Lowenberg’s international petition reaches 6700 mark.

Once the main event was over and the “Waffen SSers” had left, a small contingent from “Latvia Without Nazism” (affiliated with the controversial “World Without Nazism”) was allowed to protest. Led by the ever colorful Joe Koren (top), the group dressed as fumigation & disinfection specialists, with full gear and uniforms, to symbolically clear away the pro-Nazi residue of the marchers.

ARCHIVES OF MONITORS: NEO-NAZI MARCHES IN THE REGION, 2008 to 2015


 12 March 2015

Latest Poster from “Zeppelinus” Who is Alleged to be High Official at Lithuania’s Economy Ministry

NEWEST EFFORT MOCKS LOVE OF COUNTRY BY ROMA,  LEFTISTS,  JEWS,  BLACKS,  POLES AND LGBT.  SELECTION OF EARLIER PRODUCTIONS HERE.  “FULL DISCLOSURE” — HE HAS ALSO DEDICATED MONTAGES TO DH EDITOR.

Lithuania for Everyone. But where, then, is the country of the Lithuanians?” The signs read “I am Lithuania” with symbols interpolated, based on the actual sign (center) carried by head of the Union of Jewish Students at last Wednesday’s neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius.

Will the “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” maintain its usual silence? Where are The Bagels?

The poster’s theme, mocking the inclusivist “Lithuania for Everybody [visiems]” (the common reply to the neo-Nazis’ “Lithuania for Lithuanians” [Lietuviams]) is taken from the courageous anti-Nazi demonstration by the head of the Union of Jewish Students in Lithuania at the city-center neo-Nazi event allowed by authorities on the nation’s independence day. See next story.


11 March 2015

1,500 Neo-Nazis and Far-Right Extremists Again Given Vilnius’s Main Boulevard on Nation’s March 11th Independence Day; They Parade from Cathedral Square to Nation’s Parliament with Fascist Symbols and Chants of “Lietuva Lietuviams” (Lithuania for [Pure] Lithuanians) 

STATEMENTS FROM PRECEDING DAYS; FOLLOWING THE EVENT: JEWISH COMMUNITY OF LITHUANIA’S STATEMENT AND REPORT; SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER; GEOFF VASIL IN DH

Section of the march gets underway at Vilnius’s Cathedral Square on the March 11th independence day event organized by neo-Nazi and far-right elements with state acquiescence.

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Flag with Swastika Hoisted Outside Nation’s Parliament for Over an Hour

Photo: Geoff Vasil

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For First Time, Leaders of Jewish Community, Including Chairperson Faina Kukliansky, and Jewish Student Union Come Out to Monitor and Protest the Vilnius March; Community Issues Statement; But No Sign of “Human Rights Monitoring Institute” or Bagels.

Amit Belaite and Ricardas Cektis

Amit Belaitė, president of Jewish Students’ Union boldly approaches far-right figure Ričardas Čekutis with sign that reads (in Lithuanian): “I am [star-of-david] Lithuania”. For years, Mr. Čekutis was a high official of the Genocide Center. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Continuing to flank the fascist spokesman (right), Ms. Belaitė is supported by Simas Levinas (left), head of the Jewish Religious Community of Lithuania. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff Leads Group of Seven Protesters in Partnership with Defending History; Part of Zuroff’s One Month Odyssey to All Four Baltic Neo-Nazi Events; SWC Statement; Photo galleries by Julius Norwilla and  by Bill Pahl.

Left to right: Julius Norwilla, Markus Pollak, Dovid Katz, Simas Levinas, Pinchos Fridberg, Efraim Zuroff, Milan Chersonski. For a dozen years (1999-2011), Mr. Chersonski edited the Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania.  Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

Three Down, One to Go, in Efraim Zuroff’s Odyssey to the Baltic Month of Neo-Nazi Marches: (1) Kaunas, 16 FebruaryMONITORED; (2) Tallinn, 24 FebruaryMONITORED; (3) Vilnius, 11 MarchTHE MAYOR?  HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS? (4) Riga, 16 MarchPETITION.

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Once again, thousands of fascists march past the “Jewish Public Library” and once again, not one member of  staff came out to politely protest the glorification of fascism in a city whose 60,000 Jews were massacred.  Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

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combi1

Right-wing party politician Emanuelis Zingeris unexpectedly bumps into the SWC / Defending History crowd near the march. He was warm and chatty, but when invited to be photographed together with our team, says “Bye” and heads down Gedimino Boulevard via express. Photos: DefendingHistory.com. However, thanks to Julius Norwilla’s camera, the image of a cetain threesome was captured. SEE ALSO: Geoff Vasil’s take on the encounter.

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Scenes from the day….

Photomontage by DefendingHistory.com

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From the monitors…

Photomontage by DefendingHistory.com


 16 February 2015

Wiesenthal Center – Defending History Team of 12 Monitors & Protests Kaunas Independence Day Neo-Nazi March

Lithuanian Jewish Community Issues Statement on Feb. 20th

MARCH FEATURED LONG SERIES OF FASCIST-STYLE TAUNTS OF LIETUVA LIETUVIAMS  (“LITHUANIA FOR [ETHNIC] LITHUANIANS”) ALONG WITH SWASTIKAS, OTHERFASCIST SYMBOLS AND A HUGE BANNER OF THE 1941 NAZI PUPPET PM WHO COLLABORATEDIN THE DESTRUCTION OF HIS CITY’S CITIZENS WHO WERE JEWISH. MAYOR’S OFFICE GAVE PERMITS FOR CITY CENTER TRAVESTY ON NATION’S INDEPENDENCE DAY.

ZERO PUBLIC REACTION FROM GOV. OFFICIALS OR DOMESTIC HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS.  THE WIESENTHAL CENTERDEFENDING HISTORY AND THE COUNTRY’S JEWISH COMMUNITY TO DATE THE ONLY PUBLIC VOICES.

Monitoring team was a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office in partnership with the Vilnius-based Defending History team.

Dozen protesters (vs. a march of up to 500) included five members of Lithuanian Jewish community (in private capacity), but no sign of any Bagels or other funded antisemitism (or human rights) monitors.  

latest-news-for-marketing-firm

AFTER THE EVENT:  JTA; Newsru.com;  15min.lt;  Alfa.lt;  Balsas.lt;  Delfi.lt;  Enlacejudío.com;  EuropaUniversal;  Faktai.lt;  FB;  Forward;  ICEJ;  Info.smi;  Interfax;  International Business Times;  Israel Nachrichten;  Jerusalem Post; JP (2); Jewish Community of Lithuania;  Kauno diena;  Lrt.lt;  Lrytas.lt;  Obzor;  Newsru.co.il;  News02elf;  Radiojai.com.ar;  RT;  Shalom Life;  Simon Wiesenthal Center;  Strategic Culture Foundation;  Times of Israel (French edition);  Vilniaus diena;  Ztis.cz.

RUN-UP TO THE EVENT:  i24; Defending History (+ DH correspondence with mayor’s office; + SWC’s letter to the mayor).

PHOTO COLLECTIONS:  Julius Norwilla; 15min.lt;  Delfi.lt;  Facebook;  Kauno diena;  Lrytas.lt;  Vilniaus diena.

VIDEOS:  Lrytas.tv;  Lrt.lt.

NEO-NAZI & FAR-RIGHT  REACTIONDavidDuke.com;  Daily Slave.com;  LDiena.lt;  LtNacionalistas;  Nationalist Youth Union;  J. Panka;  Stormfront; Vyrud.livejournal;  Zeppelinus 1Zeppelinus 2 + Zeppelinus 3.   But who is Zeppelinus?

MINTAGE

Images from the neo-Nazi march in the center of Kaunas on 6 February 2015


10 February 2015

Baltic Nazi-Glorifying Marching Season Underway

COME JOIN US IN KAUNAS, MONDAY 16 FEB. at 1 PM (1300), AT RAMYBĖS PARK, TO MONITOR, SILENTLY PROTEST, & REMEMBER THE  CITY’S MORE THAN 30,000 MURDERED JEWISH CITIZENS.

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WIESENTHAL CENTER’S EFRAIM ZUROFF FLYING IN TO MONITOR EVENT AND LEAD PEACEFUL PROTEST;  HIS LETTER TO KAUNAS MAYOR;  OBZOR;  DELFI.LT;  KAUNO DIENA;  ALKAS.LT

DH’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH KAUNAS MAYOR’S OFFICE. FOR THE RECORD:ISRAELI HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ LETTER OF 2013.

Presidents, Mayors, Cardinals, Professors, Editors —

“A splendid opportunity for Baltic leaders to just speak up”

Update: Efraim Zuroff’s op-ed on all four marches calls on Brussels to take a stand

CITY-CENTER NEO-NAZI MARCHES THAT GLORIFY WARTIME HITLER COLLABORATORS NOW SCHEDULED FOR ALL THREE BALTIC STATES; ESTONIAN & LITHUANIAN EVENTS ARE ON NATIONS’ INDEPENDENCE DAY HOLIDAYS

ESTONIA: TALLINN, FEBRUARY 24TH

LATVIA: RIGA, MARCH 16TH

LITHUANIA: KAUNAS, FEB. 16TH AND VILNIUS, MARCH 11TH

Eyewitness accounts of previous years’ marches


 3 February 2015

Sir Martin Gilbert

25 October 1936 — 3 February 2015

MAGNIFICENT HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR, DEAR FRIEND, LOYAL AND UNDAUNTED CHAMPION OF HISTORIC TRUTH

Martin Gilbert in Vilnius by DefendingHistory

Sir Martin Gilbert in Vilnius in 2009. Photo: DefendingHistory.com


January 2015

Poetry Section is Launched with Work of Ken Slade (Kęstutis Sladkevičius) and Aleksandras Bosas

SEE ALSO PAGE AND SECTION HONORING LITHUANIAN CITIZENS WHO STAND UP AGAINST HOLOCAUST DENIAL / OBFUSCATION, RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM.  PROPHET AMOS AWARDS.


27 January 2015

Historians Citeimg-paper-224x300 2015 Relevance of the Seventy Years Declaration

AUSCHWITZ LIBERATION 70TH ANNIVERSARY: Efraim Zuroff, Joshua Tartakovsky, and Pinchos Fridberg argue that Russia’s president should have been there. Dovid Katz calls for “Double Genocide” to be refuted head-on. Channel 4’s report.

———

DR. ZUROFF’S ARTICLE IN  (THE ORIGINAL) ENGLISH, GERMAN, AND RUSSIAN.  PROF. FRIDBERG’S IN ENGLISH, GERMAN, AND (THE ORIGINAL) RUSSIAN.

EYEWITNESS REPORT ON THREE REMEMBRANCE DAY EVENTS IN VILNIUS;  ON THE THIRD EVENT FEATURING GENOCIDE CENTER OFFICIAL; JERUSALEM POST & MAKOR RISHON REPORTS ON EFRAIM ZUROFF’S STATEMENT, NOW POSTED ON WIESENTHAL CENTER SITE. RESPONSE BY LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY. COMMENT BY COMMUNITY’S CHAIRPERSON FAINA KUKLIANSKY.
 ◊

23 January 2015

Roundup

Croatia: Zuroff on church’s latest honors for Nazi collaborators; on the need for Brussels to respond to the latest events

Lithuania: Will officials speak out against planned neo-Nazi and collaborator-glorifying events in Kaunas (Feb 16th) and Vilnius (March 11th)? After deputy foreign minister goes to Brussels to “fight antisemitism” Efraim Zuroff tweets, challenging him to denounce both neo-Nazi marches back home. Also: Melee on launch of Holocaust museum project miles from the city center

Latvia: Will the government stop gifting the capital’s center for the March 16th celebrations of the country’s Waffen SS?

USA: What happened to Rep. John Conyers’ amendment to the military appropriations bill? The incredible UN vote. Triumphant American tour of a documentary that glorifies a Nazi collaborator’s postwar activity without mentioning the “slight problem of 1941”…

Heat of Debate: Dan Lazare’s critique of Timothy Snyder’s alleged rubbishing of the anti-Nazi partisan resistance crops up in the “New Republic” fallout. Did the US State Dept. (via Vilnius embassy) pour money into SLS to influence the Holocaust history debates? On Poland & Ukraine: Gebert (2) and Katz in Jewish Review of Books.  Have the Tides Foundation & George Soros been manipulated to support “rigged Holocaust discussions”?

In DH:  Genrich AgranovskiEvaldas BalčiūnasRoland Binet, Frank BrendleMilan Chersonski, Pinchos Fridberg, Sebastian HagerPeter JukesVilma Fiokla KiurėJacob PilianskyTomas Venclova

News & Views.  Human Rights.  Opinion.  Books.  Poetry.  Museums.  Media.  More.


21 January 2015

Freedom of Expression in France & at UNESCO

JTA: Latvia Vetoes UNESCO Holocaust Exhibit in Paris

Simon Wiesenthal Center critiques the Latvian Government’s sabotage of exhibition that was supposed to open this week in the French capital


8 January 2015

President of the Czech Republic Breaks EU’s Wall of Silence on Ukrainian Gov’s Worship of Nazi-Era Fascists

Zeman

Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic

“Unfortunately, I cannot congratulate Ukraine on such national heroes.”

— Milos Zeman, President of the Czech Republic

More on Ukraine: Kiev center is scene of worshipful Bandera march on new year’s day; Jerusalem Post reports. Then, Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk explained that the “USSR invaded Germany and Ukraine” in World War II. Bryan Macdonald reports. William Blum in Foreign Policy Journal on US policy being “dumb and dumber”


1 January 2015

New BookBook on Bandera Poses Question for US and EU Foreign Policy. Should the West not demand, as matter of ethics, values and history, the abandonment of allies’ state glorification of major Holocaust collaborators?


22 November 2014

 A Historic Low for US (and Canadian) Foreign Policy?

UN Resolution for “Combating Glorification of Nazism” Passes in General Assembly Committee (115 for, 3 against, with 55 abstentions)

Resolution, offered by Russia, seen as inherently flawed by Putinist machinations, Russia-Ukraine crisis & East-West feuding; EU abstains, as Baltic nationalists gloat (Delfi.lt)

STILL A SHOCK that three member states voted againstUkraine, USA, Canada. Ukraine’s government recently made “heroes” of Nazi collaborators; catalogue of the last year.

CUTOUT UN-Voting-Tally-21-Nov-2014

The State Department’s idea of American moral leadership?

Text of the Resolution

Are unchecked Neo-Con politics behind the failure to Just Say No to the adulation of Nazi collaborators?

UN

Media:  Margaret Besheer in Voice of America;  Joseph Brean in Canada’s National Post;  Ken Hanly in Digital Journal;  Dovid Katz in The Times of Israel;  Ryan Maloney in Huffington Post;  John Meinhold in In Serbia News; Jim Miles in CounterPunch;  Boruch Shubert in JP Updates;  Sam Sokol in the Jerusalem Post.

THE INCREDIBLE DOCUMENT

The Real Question: Should the US, UK, Canada, the EU and the rest of the free world not sponsor their own resolution combating the glorification of Nazism which is a real problem in the eastern EU and Ukraine

TIME FOR THE UN TO LOOK AT THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION?

Related: Why did US Congressman John Conyers’ amendment restricting aid to pro-Nazi groups in Ukraine fail to pass? Max Blumenthal’s (unproven) allegations.

Glorification of Nazism section; Street names and gloried reburial in Lithuania; Issues in Croatia, Czech RepEstonia, GermanyHungary, Lithuania, Latvia, RussiaUkraine

Meanwhile, a citizen of Lithuania speaks out on memorials for Nazi collaborators and state-sanctioned parades that glorify Hitler collaborators on nation’s independence day


20 November 2014

The Face of Roma in Vilnius

FIOKLA'S PHOTO OF ROMA GIRL NOV 14

Does a Program of “Integration” Undermine the Roma Community in Lithuania’s Capital?

SPECIAL REPORT BY VILMA FIOKLA KIURĖ

Ruth Barnett (London) Responds

Related Defending History sections:  Roma,  Human Rights,  Opinion


Autumn 2014

Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) Relaunched for 2015

img-paper

PROF. DANNY BEN-MOSHE LAUNCHES DECLARATION’S  NEW WEBSITE  ◊  RELAUNCH FOR  JANUARY 2015 HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY ON 70th ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ   ◊   NEED UNDERLINED BY THE BALTIC-NATIONALIST INSPIRED RESOLUTION SLIPPED INTO THE US CONGRESS LAST JUNE

SYD IN 15 LANGUAGES

Reports in JWire; JDU; SYD’s history in DH (a minister’s Hitler-Stalin moustache pronouncement; Vytenis Andriukaitis’s reply; Denis MacShane); Early media in the film Rewriting History; In Dan Stone’s new book on postwar Europe; Facebook.


October 2015

Defending History Brings Results…

For First Time, NY Yivo to Honor (on Dec. 17) a Holocaust Resistance Hero Defamed by Lithuania’s Prosecutors

Event is for NY Yivo fundraising, but no Yiddish text included

HOPES RISE FOR LITHUANIAN GOVERNMENT PUBLIC APOLOGY TO DR. YITZHAK ARAD, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, HERO OF THE ANTI-NAZI RESISTANCE AND ISRAEL’S WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, MAJOR HOLOCAUST SCHOLAR AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF YAD VASHEM

Dr. Arad is a victim of a state-sponsored campaign of defamation. When forced by international outcry to abandon their “pre-trial investigation,” prosecutors published a further defamatory page on their own website. It’s still there!

Defamation remains widespread on Wikipedia, on the web, in “academic” books, and by the “Lithuanian Human Rights [!] Association” (LHRA). Public apology in writing seen as only remedy.

What does Yitzhak Arad think about the “red-brown commission” and the Prague Declaration?

Hopes rising Yivo director will quit the  “red-brown commission” which Yitzhak Arad exposed in Defending History as a major engine of the Double Genocide movement in Europe and beyond. Yivo membership in the Commission is seen as a betrayal of Holocaust survivors and support for Prague Declaration (which is publicly supported by the commission). See Seventy Years Declaration for response.

WHEN WILL DR. RACHEL MARGOLIS BE HONORED?

צי האָט דער איצטיקער ניו⸗יאָרקער ייוואָ אינגאַנצן אַרויסגעוואָרפן יידיש פון דער היינטצייטיקער טעטיקייט? וואָס וואָלטן דערויף געזאָגט דינה אַבראַמאָוויטש, אוריאל וויינרייך, מאַקס וויינרייך, יודל מאַרק, חנה מלאָטעק, שלמה נאָבל, נחום סטוטשקאָוו, אברהם סוצקעווער, נח פּרילוצקי, זעליג⸗הירש קלמנאָוויטש, זלמן רייזען, צמח שאַבאַד, מרדכי שעכטער? 

Five Survivors Wait for Apologies

Five Holocaust survivors, and the year the campaign against each was launched by government units in Lithuania. From left to right: Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Dr. Rachel Margolis, Ms. Fania Brantsovsky, attorney Joseph Melamed, and physicist Professor Pinchos Fridberg. Many bold Lithuanian citizens have stood up to state-sponsored efforts to obfuscate the Holocaust via revisionist historiography.


August 2015

Latvian for “Springtime for Hitler”?

Riga Jewish Heritage Guide Aleks Feigmanis and Wiesenthal Center’s Efraim Zuroff Blast New Musical that Glorifies a Holocaust Perpetrator; Associated Press Reports

THE SHOW’S NATIONAL TOUR STARTED ON OCTOBER 11

MORE


NEW YORK, 19 October 2014

“Klinghoffer” — A Dangerous Pattern of Abuse of Drama to Downgrade Murder and Genocide?

Glorification of the local perpetrators of the Holocaust is a problem in many of the pro-Western countries of Eastern Europe


KIEV, 14 October 2014

Ukrainian Parliament’s Debate on Glorifying World War II Hitlerist Nationalists Ends in Disarray

But “Centrist” President Poroshenko Proclaims Day of Fascist Group’s Founding as National Holiday

Mainstream Western Media Mostly Ignores the News (but see: Sunday Times)

In a September tweet, Ukraine’s president said UPA fighters were an “example of heroism.” It was a prelude to the scheduled Oct. 14th debate in parliament on declaring Hitler’s executioners in Ukraine to be “freedom fighters.” When violence broke out on the 14th outside the national parliament, the Western media, including the BBC, whitewashed the Hitler-era Holocaust perpetrators being glorified by Ukraine’s nationalist leaders.

But the UPA,  OUN and the Banderists were pro-Nazi, racist, antisemitic militias infamous for mass murders of civilians during the Holocaust.  See: Yad  Vashem.  Yitzhak Arad.  John-Paul Himka.  Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe.  Per Anders Rudling.

Presumably, nobody forced Ukraine’s president in 2014 to tweet on “that matter of history” from over 70 years ago? He came out with even worse at a press conference, before going on to proclaim a national independence holiday based on the fascist UPA’s sacred date.

RELATED COVERAGE:  Foreign PolicyGuardianInternational Business Times, London Jewish Chronicle, The Nation (II), NBC NewsTelegraph, The HillWashington PostZDF

BACKGROUND HERE


DELRAY, FLORIDA, October 2014

Screening of Bloom’s “Defending Holocaust History” Elicits Spirited Discussion

DFH poster

Now Available on YouTube


VILNIUS, 16 May 2014

Seven Lithuanian Champions of Human Rights Awarded First Annual

James Tissor the Prophet Amos

James Tissot’s The Prophet Amos (around 1888)

PROPHET AMOS AWARD FOR COURAGE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

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October 2014 

Daniel Lazare Deconstructs Timothy Snyder’s Trashing of Anti-Nazi World War II Partisans, and New Role as Point Man for (East European) Far Right and (US) Neo-Cons

PLUS: CAN YOU RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE WITH A PROFESSOR FROM YALE?

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6 September 2014

Five Years

Five years have elapsed since this journal was founded on 6 Sept. 2009, in memory of Professor Meir Shub (1924-2009). Outside coverage includes David Hirsch in Engage and Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha, Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, Mark Ames in The Nation, and Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger and Peter Jukes in Motley Moose (2011); Danny Ben-Moshe in his film Rewriting History (2012); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Richard Bloom in his film Defending Holocaust History (2014).  CONTINUE READING

PLEASE DONATE TO HELP DEFENDING HISTORY CONTINUE TO DEFEND HISTORY — AND TO PAY OUR AUTHORS IN EASTERN EUROPE FOR THEIR WORK…

———

2 September 2014

The Defending History Community Celebrates the 77th Birthday of

Vilnius author (in Russian), editor (in English, Lithuanian, Russian, Yiddish), historian (European), theatre director (Yiddish) and tireless, fearless (global) intellectual champion in the struggle against the far right’s Holocaust revisionism, racism and antisemitism

MILAN  CHERSONSKI

MILAN

77

A pillar of strength in the Jewish Community of Lithuania and far beyond

Selections from his years as editor of the quadrilingual Jerusalem of Lithuania.  Chersonski section in Defending History Film tribute.  Facebook.

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LONDON, 26 August 2014

Ernst Lowenberg (1922—2014)

Ernst-Josef-Lowenberg-300x231

Ernst Josef Lowenberg

(28 December 1922 — 26 August 2014)

In his final months, London Holocaust survivor Ernst Lowenberg, a native of Halle am Saale in Germany, wrote to UK prime minister David Cameron asking the government to take a stand on East European Holocaust revisionism.

In 2012, on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, he led a peaceful, dignified, friendly picket-line outside the Lithuanian Embassy in London and handed the consul a petition.

He is pictured above at the prime minister’s Holocaust Commission consultation event held in London on 5 May 2014.

Funeral service Tuesday, 2 Sept. 2014 at 2 PM at West Chapel, Hoop Lane, Golders Green, London NW11

———


Summer 2014

                     Seventy Years Declaration Now Open to Public

sign here2

Text  ◊  15 European languages  ◊  History  ◊  Origins  ◊  As Counter Prague 2008

———

Summer 2014

ISSUES IN THE NEWS

(I) Freedom of Speech

Estonia   ♦   Hungary   ♦  Latvia   ♦   Lithuania (Balčiūnas; Beržinis; Butkus; Dyukov; FridbergGrabauskas; Melamed)

COMING SOON: Review of the Lithuanian edition of a book on the Holocaust that got its author banned from attending the book launch event

(II) Glorifying Nazi Collaborators

Croatia   ♦   Estonia   ♦   Hungary   ♦   Latvia   ♦   Lithuania   ♦   Ukraine


August 2014 

Ukrainian Government’s Use of Neo-Nazi Paramilitaries is Reported by London’s Daily Telegraph

———
“But Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries […] should send a shiver down Europe’s spine. Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or antisemites.”  Tom Parfitt in the Daily Telegraph.
ukraine_3002177c

Azov Unit fighting for Ukraine’s government. Photo: Tom Parfitt (Telegraph)

BUT USE OF PRO-HITLER ELEMENTS BY WASHINGTON’S ALLY GETS ONE SENTENCE AT END OF NEW YORK TIMES REPORT

Western Media Begins to Cover the Far Right and Nazi-Worshiping Aspects; See also Ukraine Section;  Page;  2014 Media Page.


Plungyán (Plungė), 30 July 2014

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (Jakovas Bunka), Famed Wood Sculptor, Last Jew of Plungyán (Plungė, Lithuania), Dies at 91

His Art Commemorates the Holocaust in Western Lithuania

Was World War II Red Army Veteran of the War Against Hitler

Yankev Bunk

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (13 July 1923 – 30 July 2014)  Photo: Adam Ellick

2011 VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH YANKL-YOSL  BUNK IN PLUNGYÁN

Bunk’s sculptures; his memoir of Jewish PlungyánJewishGen Kehila links; Adam Ellick on Bunk; JTA; Bunk’s list of the Jews of Plungyán“hypothetical” speech at the 2011 Plungyán commemoration.

Bunka's weeping girl on Kausenai Hill

Bunk’s massive wooden sculpture at the forest hill spot (Plungyán/Plungė, western Lithuania), where 74 teenage Jewish girls (from the local high school) were murdered by locals who knew them. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.


Summer 2014

WELCOME TO DEFENDING HISTORY (FROM THE NEWEST BRAND OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL)

When Citizens of Lithuania Speak Out Boldly

New Latvian Musical, “Sugar Herbert Sugar” Glorifies Holocaust Mass Murderer Herberts Cukurs

Tickets now available online for performances around the country. About the show. Signature tune released on YouTube (Would they have done better with the old Archies version of “Sugar Sugar”?)

Are we back to Springtime for Hitler, just focused on celebrating a local mass murderer of Latvian Jewry? Will the hosting venues, including the City Cultural Centers in Jelgava and Valmiera, and prestigious halls in Riga, Liepāja, Rēzekne and Ventspils also be holding memorials for their citizens murdered in the Latvian Holocaust in which Herberts Cukurs, known as the “Hangman of Riga,” took such a personal and violent part?

Produxers, The - Springtime for Hitler Magazine (PSoL 060612) combined (1)

———

Meanwhile…

Latvian Constitutional Court Upholds “Double Genocide” Restriction on Free Speech; Five Years Max

jail

Surpasses Lithuanian law (up to two years imprisonment) and Hungary’s version (up to three years)

Opinion that there was one genocide in the country (the Holocaust) remains criminalized by 2014 law, in the spirit of the laws passed in Hungary and Lithuania in 2010

Comment on Eastern EU speech laws by: Milan Chersonski, Leonidas Donskis, Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff; See also: FREE SPEECH Section

QUESTION: Does the new musical Sugar Herbert Sugar perhaps violate the new law which bans (with punishment up to five years jailtime) “glorification, denial, justification or gross derogation of genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace or war crimes against Latvia perpetrated by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.” Or is the law null and void when it comes to the Holocaust in Latvia?

LATVIA SECTION

Summer 2014

Is a Vilnius Police Unit Again Harassing Evaldas Balčiūnas for his Articles on the Holocaust?

LATEST NEWS.  EARLIER REPORT.  BALČIŪNAS SECTION.

FREE SPEECH SECTION

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Balciunas and Zuroff Kaunas 16 Feb 2014

Evaldas Balčiūnas (left) joined Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office, last February in Kaunas, Lithuania, for a small, silent, peaceful protest against the state-approved neo-Nazi march in the city’s center on the nation’s independence day.


 June 2014

Did Someone Sneak Some Holocaust Revisionism into the US Congress?

Under the Radar: Did East European nationalists — trying to insinuate the “Two Holocausts Theory” into the West  — slip a resolution right onto Capitol Hill?

stealth bomber

Flying in from the east?

Hurtful Shock for Veterans, Holocaust Survivors & their Families: US Congress Approves Mixed Soviet-Nazi Commemoration Day in Line with 2008 “Prague Declaration”  (Text)

RESPONSES:

Clemens Heni; Dovid Katz

red-brownBALTIC NATIONALIST GROUPS PRESSED FOR THE RESOLUTION; GOVTRACK; IT WAS ATTACHED TO THE MILITARY APPROPRIATIONS BILL (SEE AMENDMENT 134 / 1266); FULL TEXT; LITHUANIAN AMBASSADOR IN WASHINGTON CONFIRMS CURRENT POLITICAL AIM OF (DE FACTO) REVISION OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY.

SAME GROUPS THAT HAVE SUPPORTED PROJECTS TO HONOR NAZI COLLABORATORS?

But what’s wrong with a single “red-brown” remembrance day?

YITZHAK ARAD

YEHUDA BAUER

ABRAHAM COOPER

EFRAIM ZUROFF

SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION

THE HOLOCAUST IS IN EFFECT DOWNGRADED TO ONE OF TWO SUPPOSEDLY “EQUAL HOLOCAUSTS”; See: Yitzhak Arad, Yehuda BauerDanny Ben-Moshe, Milan ChersonskiLeonidas Donskis, Esther Goldberg Gilbert, Dovid KatzRachel Kostanian, Denis MacShaneJohn Mann, Efraim Zuroff

Are US officials aware that the Prague Declaration is the foundational document of the ultranationalists’ “Double Genocide” campaign to revise Holocaust history? Of the Seventy Years Declaration (2012) response? Do these members of Congress really believe that those who liberated Auschwitz are morally identical to its killers?

FILMS: Danny Ben-Moshe’s Rewriting History; Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust HistoryGerit  Ziegler’s When Double Genocide Means Single Genocide

BATTLE OF EUROPEAN DECLARATIONS: Seventy Years Declaration (2012) is a reply to the Prague Declaration (2008); Statement of the World Union of Progressive Judaism (2013); of the British Board of DeputiesHistory of SYD (to 2014)

RELATED:

Double Genocide section;  Blaming the VictimsGlorification of Collaborators2012 reburial of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister; Sample of the antisemitic essence of Double Genocide (by current official at the Economy Ministry)


Freedom of Speech in the Eastern EU?

ŠIAULIAI, 22 MAY 2014

DH Staff Writer Evaldas Balčiūnas is Investigated by Lithuanian Police

Summons Issued

stamp in Balciunas harassment case May 2014

He is author ofseries of bold articles about state sanitization and glorification of Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators

Newest investigation follows recent police and prosecutorial harassment of Giedrius Grabauskas and Saulius Beržinis

PATTERN OF CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST? PROSECUTORS ON YITZHAK ARAD (2007); HARASSMENT OF VILNA GHETTO SURVIVORS (2008); 2 YEAR JAIL LAW (2010); POLICE PURSUIT OF JOSEPH MELAMED (2011); RED-BROWN COMMISSION’S DEFAMATION OF PINCHOS FRIDBERG (2013-14); SUMMARY OF STATE DEFAMATION OF SURVIVORS (2008-2014);  GIEDRIUS GRABAUSKAS (2014); SAULIUS BERŽINIS (2014); EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS (2014).

Evaldas-Balciunas

Evaldas Balčiūnas

RELATED: Defending History report on Lithuania’s 2010 law. Essays by: Leonidas DonskisMilan Chersonski. Section on Democracy in the Eastern EU.

RELATED: Police action against feminists who stood up peacefully to the neo-Nazis in Lithuania.

“We stand with Evaldas 100%.”

—Editor

With Efraim Zuroff

On February 16th 2014, Evaldas Balčiūnas joined the small, peaceful and silent protest led by Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office, on the occasion of the annual neo-Nazi march in Kaunas which again glorified the city’s 1941 Nazi puppet ruler who collaborated in sending his city’s 30,000 Jewish citizens to their deaths.

Evaldas and Efraimas


PRAGUE, 20 MAY 2014

European Union

“Double Genociders” in Prague Triumphantly Announce Participation of “Cabinet of Viviane Reding” at 12-13 June Conference on “Legacy of Totalitarianism Today”

Will EU’s Commissioner for Justice legitimize the Prague campaign to obfuscate the Holocaust for the East-European-nationalist inspired rewrite of history?

Will there be a single paper on current glorification of Nazi collaborators in a conference on “Legacy of Totalitarianism Today”?

BACKGROUND:

THE PRAGUE DECLARATION (2008); SYD (2012)

THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION (1998-2014)

DOUBLE GENOCIDE

STATE GLORIFICATION OF HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS

DOES DOUBLE GENOCIDE “NEED” TO TARGET HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS?

The “Prague Platform” organizing the conference features on its home page the Prague Declaration and partnership with (inter alia) the Vilnius based Genocide Center and the “red-brown” commission. Also: Is EU funding squandered on rampant infighting?


 LONDON, 9 May 2014

Appeal to Prime Minister David Cameron

Survivor Calls on Prime Minister to Reject “Double Genocide” Revisionism

Ernst LowenbergErnst Lowenberg, 91, pictured at the May 2014 UK consultation with Holocaust survivors, has written to David Cameron calling for rejection of the “Double Genocide” revisionism emanating from Eastern Europe. In 2012, he handed a petition to the Lithuanian embassy in London.

UK PAGE       UK SECTION

VILNIUS, 16 May 2014

Genrich Agranovski on the Fate of the Old Jewish Gravestones of Vilna

Confirms rumors about the steps outside the Contemporary Arts Center on Vokiečių Street

1 2 3

 ♦

Related: Jewish gravestones (matséyves) in the decorative walls of Lazdynai; on steps of the Reformed Evangelical Church on Pylimo; Blood libel plaque in the Bernardinai Catholic Church


Spring 2014

 UKRAINE: BIG PART OF STORY IS TABOO FOR MAIN WESTERN MEDIA, BUT WHY?

Putin’s indefensible actions are robustly exposed. But there is reluctance to look critically at “pro-Western” forces that glorify (as “national heroes”) Nazi collaborators and Holocaust mass murderers…

What’s Western about that?

bandera-march


HISTORY FOR SALE?  AS EVENTS UNFOLD, ARE WESTERN GOVERNMENTS TACITLY HELPING TO “FIX” THE HOLOCAUST BARBARITY OF BANDERA, THE UPA AND THE OUN? THESE GROUPS MURDERED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS (UKRAINIAN CITIZENS) ON AN ETHNIC BASIS IN THE CAUSE OF HITLERIST RACIAL ELIMINATION.

WESTERN VALUES?  IS IT MORAL FOR THE US, NATO AND THE EU TO COVER FOR THE ELEVATION  OF HOLOCAUST PERPETRATORS TO NATIONAL HERO STATUS? CAN STATE-SANCTIONED NAZI-WORSHIP REALLY BE IRRELEVANT TO TODAY’S RACISM, ANTISEMITISM & HOMOPHOBIA?

HISTORIANS FOR HIRE?  ARE BIG (AND SMALL) GUN HISTORIANS ALREADY BEING MOBILIZED TO OBFUSCATE THE ISSUES AND SANITIZE THE MASS MURDERERS OF UKRAINIAN JEWRY? TO PROMOTE MORE “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” REVISIONISM? ALLIES’ DEFEAT OF HITLER AT HUGE SACRIFICE IS INCREASINGLY MARGINALIZED BY THE REVISIONISTS.

Bandera in Independence Square in Kiev Huge banner in Independence Square in Kiev glorifies wartime fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose Hitlerist organization murdered tens of thousands of civilians — citizens of Ukraine — on an ethnic basis. Photo: Washington Post. Earlier, BBC News published images of the Bandera banner gracing Kiev City Hall.

for shame

American values?! Svoboda party chief Oleh Tyahnybok. With his soul-mates, and “legitimized” by US Senator John McCain. . . On Svoboda see UCSJ; SWCGrzegorz Rossolinski-LiebePer Anders Rudling; report in the The Nation.

BUT SOME HAVE HAD THE COURAGE TO GO AGAINST THE TIDE


REVISIONISM IN THE MAKING: PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE AT THE LONSKY MUSEUM IN LVIV

SEE ARTICLE BY DR. PER ANDERS RUDLING


Spring 2014

Five Holocaust Survivors Still Wait for Apologies after Years of State-Sponsored Defamation

Four of them, in their late 80s or 90s, are heroic veterans of the anti-Nazi war effort who escaped the Vilna, Kovno or Svintsyán Ghetto to join up with the partisans in the forests of Lithuania. All their families perished in the Lithuanian Holocaust.

combo

SURVIVORS PROGRESSIVELY DEFAMED FOR POSTERITY, FROM 2006 ONWARD, BY STATE-SPONSORED AGENCIES

“ONE PUBLIC LETTER OF APOLOGY COULD REPAIR MUCH OF THE DAMAGE”

ITEM NO. 1 IN LONDON BASED INTERNATIONAL PETITION

THE SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT THEMSELVES:  YITZHAK ARAD; FANIA BRANTSOVSKY; PINCHOS FRIDBERGSARA GINAITE; RACHEL MARGOLIS (2); JOE MELAMED

COMMENT BY:  SHIMON ALPEROVICH & TUVIA JAFET (2); CHEN IVRI APTERDANNY BEN-MOSHE; GORDON BROWN; MILAN CHERSONSKILEONIDAS DONSKIS;  THE ECONOMISTABRAHAM FOXMAN; ESTHER GOLDBERG (GILBERT)SIR MARTIN GILBERT; DOV LEVIN; DENIS MACSHANE; YOSSI MELMAN (2); UK PARLIAMENT EARLY DAY MOTION; UNITED STATES CONGRESSMEN 1 & 2;  VALDAS VASILIAUSKASEFRAIM ZUROFF

“STILL TIME TO END THINGS WITH THE LAST SURVIVORS ON A NICER NOTE, AFTER 700 YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY IN LITHUANIA

FILM: REWRITING HISTORYDEFENDING HOLOCAUST HISTORY; LIZA RUFT

MEDIA COVERAGE (SELECTION):  Dana Gloger in the Jewish Chronicle (2008); Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds (2008): Raphael Ahren in Haaretz (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha (2009); Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post (2010); Esther Goldberg in Canadian Jewish News (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger (2010); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Daniel Brook, coming soon (2014).


8 April 2014

April 2014 International Romani Day

ROMA SECTION

Vilma Fiokla Kiurė looks at Roma issues in Lithuania: Roma: Presumption of Guilt


31 March 2014

Criminalization of History in the Eastern EU?

Is a police crime unit the appropriate authority for investigating EU/NATO citizens of 2014 who oppose state glorification of alleged Nazi collaborators of 1941?

Vilnius Police Crime Unit Harassing Holocaust Researcher and Film Maker Saulius Beržinis

Beržinis is one of many bold Lithuanian citizens who have spoken up

PATTERN OF CRIMINALIZING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST? PROSECUTORS ON YITZHAK ARAD (2007); HARASSMENT OF VILNA GHETTO SURVIVORS (2008); 2 YEAR JAIL LAW (2010); POLICE PURSUIT OF JOSEPH MELAMED (2011), GIEDRIUS GRABAUSKAS (2014), SAULIUS BERŽINIS (2014)


27 March 2014

Dr. Shimon Alperovich

11 Oct. 1928 — 27 March 2014

Dr. Simon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavicius) by DefendingHistory.com

REPORT HERE

SHIMON ALPEROVICH SECTION IN DEFENDING HISTORY


23 March 2014

British Board of Deputies Calls for European Parliament to Reject Prague Declaration’s Holocaust Downgrade

Move follows statement by the World Union for Progressive Judaism. More on Prague Declaration. Responses include: SYDRewriting History and other films.

What’s wrong with Double Genocide?  Shimon AlperovichVytenis Povilas AndriukaitisYitzhak AradEvaldas BalciunasYehuda BauerDanny Ben-MosheMilan ChersonskiLeonidas DonskisPinchos FridbergEsther Goldberg GilbertDovid KatzRachel KostanianDenis MacShaneJohn MannGeoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas)Efraim Zuroff


18 March 2014

More Holocaust Revisionism in “Prague Declaration Europe”?


Vilnius Constitutional Court: “Double Genocide” via New Attempt to Inflate Definition of the G-Word?

THE NEW DOCUMENT; REPORT; SEE ALSO STATE “GENOCIDE CENTER” AND ITS “HOLOCAUST ENVY”

Move comes four years after parliament passed a law effectively criminalizing the opinion that there was one Holocaust in the country

Double Genocide machinations in Eastern Europe


 On Double Genocide see:

ARTICLES: Shimon AlperovichVytenis Povilas AndriukaitisYitzhak AradEvaldas BalciunasYehuda BauerDanny Ben-MosheMilan ChersonskiLeonidas DonskisPinchos Fridberg, Esther Goldberg GilbertDovid KatzRachel KostanianDenis MacShaneJohn MannGeoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas)Efraim Zuroff

FILMS: Danny Ben-Moshe’s Rewriting History; Richard Bloom’s Defending Holocaust History; Gerit  Ziegler’s When Double Genocide Means Single Genocide

BATTLE OF EUROPEAN DECLARATIONS: Seventy Years Declaration (2012) is a reply to the Prague Declaration (2008); Statement of the World Union of Progressive Judaism (2013); History of SYD (to 2014)

RELATED:

Double Genocide section;  Blaming the VictimsGlorification of Collaborators2012 reburial of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister; Sample of the antisemitic essence of Double Genocide (by current official at the Economy Ministry)


DOUBLE GENOCIDE IN THE ANTISEMITIC IMAGINATION:
“Thank you for our victory,” says the swarmy Jew to the Soviet soldier as the city burns and a raped blonde lies dead. Courtesy of Zeppelinus” who allegedly still works in the Economy Ministry.

DOUBLE GENOCIDE TOURISM:

SurveyGenocide CenterGenocide MuseumGruto ParkasTolerance CenterStreet names and university shrines for Nazi collaborators


February-March 2014

Baltic Marching Season

Interface of Pro-Fascist Marches, Holocaust Revisionism, and Contemporary Racism

EFRAIM ZUROFF IN THE HUFFINGTON POSTJERUSALEM POST AND TABLET

Defending History, in harmony with the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, monitored the three 2014 Nazi-ally glorifying marches in the Baltics. Authorities invested shrewdly this year in downplaying all three, but failed to simply move them away from prestigious city centers (which would have offended the far right and ultranationalist base). Visible fascist symbols were reduced from previous years, local opposition sometimes neutralized, and media interest discouraged.

Kaunas on February 16th

Vilnius on March 11th

Riga on March 16th

But the noxious worship, in 2014’s EU, of Hitler’s allies in Holocaust-era Europe (now being cast as implicitly “acceptable”) remains a shameful constant, one that calls out for urgent scrutiny in the West. Yet again, Defending History is defense of today’s — and tomorrow’s — human rights and EU/NATO values. The adulaters of wartime Hitlerism are its moral heirs: today’s propagaters of racism, ultranationalism, antisemitism, homophobia and Aryanist theories of national purity.

27 February 2014

Prague’s Double Genocide “Platform” is Broken

ITS “CONSTITUTION” IS THE HOLOCAUST-REVISIONIST “PRAGUE DECLARATION”

The “Platform”; the Orwellian “Reconciliation” of histories; What is Double Genocide? DH’s section; What’s it all about?

A EUROPEAN RESPONSE: THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION (SYD)


February 2014

New (and unconfirmed) report from Vilnius

STILL NO DENIALS FROM POLICE OR PROSECUTORS ON AUTHENTICITY OF FEB. 2014 DOCUMENT CIRCULATING

IS A 2014 EU POLICE FORCE HARASSING A CITIZEN FOR A 2013 ARTICLE ABOUT ALLEGED 1941 LOCAL HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS?


New (and confirmed) report from Vilnius

ONE YEAR LATER:

Vilnius Holocaust Survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg is Still Defamed on State-Sponsored Commission Website

BACKGROUND ON THE AFFAIR;  ON THE COMMISSION

27 January 2014

Hungarian Medal Returned

Randolph Braham, 91, Survivor and Major Holocaust Scholar, Returns Medal to Hungarian Government over “Whitewashing” of Holocaust

Reports in New York Times Guardian; Braham’s Open Letter

Is Hungarian Government Abusing Good Will of Congressman Tom Lantos’s Widow?

Focus shifting to recipients of Lithuanian state honors after gov. glorification of Nazi collaborators by reburials, street names, Kaunas univ. shrine, marchesevents & campaign against Holocaust survivors


Honoring a Hero of the Anti-Nazi Resistance in Rechovot

Dr. Rachel Margolis, 92, Honored on Holocaust Remembrance Day

LiteRachel Margolis, 92, is honored at her home in Rechovot on 27 January by Brig. Gen. Zvi Kan-Tor (center), head of the task force establishing Museum of the Jewish Soldier of World War II and Abraham Grinzaid, head of Israel’s association of Soviet army veterans who fought against the Nazis.

WHO IS RACHEL MARGOLIS?   GORDON BROWN SPEAKS OUTEvaldas Balčiūnas




[UPDATED]


 NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT FOR LEADER OF A 1941 HITLERIST MILITIA |  GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS  |  USA  |  LITHUANIA  |  CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS  | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S NEW SECTION ON NEW BRITAIN, CONN. ISSUES

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