Democracy

Introduction to the Democracy Page

It is painful to note that a region that has made such enormous strides toward freedom and open society since the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet state should now be backsliding into attempted abolition of free debate, and imposition of state-sanctioned theories of history (with threatened incarceration for dissent), of all things, on the subjects of Holocaust Obfuscation, World War II history, and the attempted codification of ultranationalist and xenophobic versions of European history.

The situation was made much worse by the June 2010 law threatening up to two years of imprisonment for those who would in effect deny the equality or genocidal nature of the Nazi and Soviet regimes (details here).

The increasingly painful topic of democracy now includes also broader questions of easy abuse of the judiciary and prosecutorial agencies by the New Far Right, and the degree to which freedom of expression on the issues at hand is often stifled by the simple mechanism of unwritten rules making it clear that young people in particular who wish to take an independent stance that is at variance with state policy need to make peace with forfeiting their careers in their chosen field at home, and to consider emigration as a top option, leaving the region with fewer and fewer independent thinkers. This disappointing trend can and should be reversed.
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MEP Donskis challenges attacks on European Parliament’s queries on Lithuanian Parliament’s homophobic legislation

Posted on 7 February 2011 by staff

In a new essay, published in Lithuanian on 2 February , and in English on 7 February 2011, MEP Professor Leonidas Donskis takes to task Lithuanian commentators and politicians who have attacked the European Parliament for daring to criticize proposed new homophobic legislation making its way through the Lithuanian Parliament. He also takes note of the unfortunate role of state security services in realms they should have nothing to do with in an EU democracy, while bemoaning their total lack of concern with politicians and their top advisors who flirt openly with neo-Nazi ideology and policies. He writes: ‘Perhaps it is time to worry about the stench from the rising tide of fascist ideas and interpretations of history in our political life and media instead.’  Full text here.

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Who Got Stupid, the European Parliament or Us?

Posted on 7 February 2011 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

The European Parliament recently reacted by way of a resolution to a piece of draft legislation by a member of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, Petras Gražulis. If enacted, his legislation would have de jure expelled from public life homosexual citizens in the country. Since then, several comments  have already rung out in our public space in Lithuania, whose essence, despite differences in levels of nuance, is similar: that the European Parliament is allegedly interfering too minutely and grandly in the affairs of the Republic of Lithuania; that it is allegedly violating the principle of subsidiarity; that it is applying double standards because it was so careful in commenting upon the sins of France in the sphere of human rights but ruthlessly attacks the new member states, first and foremost Lithuania.

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Lithuania and Tolerance

Posted on 10 January 2011 by staff
O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

2010 was an astonishing year for human rights in Lithuania. Toward the beginning of 2010 there were public demonstrations in the capital by self-designated patriotic youth, decked out in various paramilitary costumes, in plain clothes bearing variations on swastikas and wearing white arm bands. These Lithuanian neo-Nazis marched across the main streets and squares in Vilnius on independence day (March 11th), made a showing to protest against a silent march of people from the main square to a cemetery to honor the dead on Soviet Victory Day (May 9th), and most spectacularly managed to outnumber 10 to 1 Lithuania’s first gay pride march (May 8th) with a violent mob throwing objects, hurtling insults and proudly waving flags with pseudo-swastikas behind police lines. The gay pride march almost didn’t happen, as it hadn’t many years in a row, because of bureaucratic impedance from the Vilnius municipality over issuing a permit and from law enforcement and the parliament. The neo-Nazi marches, on the other hand, had support from within parliament, MPs who personally asked for, and got, permits from the city for a march. Several MPs also came to the anti-gay pride protest with bullhorns, stormed police barriers and generally foamed at the mouth, caught on camera.

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When a ‘Human Rights Association’ accepts and repeats the antisemitic canards in town

Posted on 3 January 2011 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

ORIGINAL DOCUMENT HERE

“Also, it has been started to require the sentence of the citizens of the Jewish nationality ― Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky and Rachel Margolis, as these citizens (former Soviet guerrillas) have organized the massive slaughter of civilians in Kaniūkai Village, Lithuania (killing 38 civilians) on 29 January 1944. Attention should be paid to the fact that the very Y. Arad has departed to Israel.”  — from the statement just published by the Lithuanian Human Rights Association (LHRA), signed by ten of its leading experts and approved by its committee.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Democracy, Double Genocide, News, Opinion | Comments Off

Where is that Line?

Posted on 11 December 2010 by staff
O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

An unattributed piece that just appeared in the weekly magazine Veidas (it turned out the author does actually exist and even works at the Lithuanian Interior Ministry), intended to discuss the Nuremberg trial, and has become a new delimiter in our political life and public space. For the first time since the restoration of independence in 1990, the Holocaust has been publicly and openly denied in Lithuania (see here).

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Uncanny Darkness: Impressions of a Public Debate in Vilnius

Posted on 9 December 2010 by staff
O P I N I O N

by Algirdas Davidavičius

Algirdas Davidavičius, author of the text formerly published here [an essay and memoir on the December 8th 2010 Holocaust discussion held at the Misterija cafe on Totoriu Street in Vilnius, previously announced on Facebook and elsewhere as a public event] hereby apologizes to Mr Arūnas Brazauskas for inaccurately representing his  opinion, and, under legal threat, has [on 16 December 2010] removed the text from DefendingHistory.com.

The author of the removed text also hopes to take and publish in the foreseeable future an interview with Mr Brazauskas on a number of questions mentioned in the formerly published text, and urges Mr Brazauskas to express his opinions more clearly and unequivocally.

  • Algirdas Davidavičius
  • Vilnius
  • 16 December 2010

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‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’ Editor Blasts Red-Brown Jailtime Law

Posted on 16 November 2010 by staff

Milan Chersonski, editor of the quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) Jerusalem of Lithuania, official publication of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, has published a bold new essay, History: Education or Modern Politics.

The author opposes the Lithuanian government’s attempt to monopolize and dictate the ultranationalist version of history by effectively criminalizing the opinion that the Holocaust was the one genocide that occurred in the country in the twentieth century.

The law passed by the Lithuanian parliament and signed by the president last June, and which came into effect in July 2010, imposes jail sentences of up to two years for those who might dissent.

Continue reading →

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Director of Yiddish Institute heading to Kazakhstan to Promote Freedom of Expression for Journalists

Posted on 6 October 2010 by staff

OR:

YIDDISH BORAT, HAVING SAVED FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IN LITHUANIA, HEADS FOR KAZAKHSTAN TO EDUCATE THE OSCE. HE ‘CLEANSED’ HIS ‘YIDDISH INSTITUTE’ OF YIDDISH FOR 11 MONTHS OF THE YEAR. . .

Sarunas Liekis, director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute has been appointed by Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to an elite team of experts who were sent to a Review Conference in Warsaw (30 Sept — 8 Oct), in preparation for a second Review Conference in Vienna (18-26 Oct), and a third in Astana, Kazakhstan (26-28 Nov). These are all in preparation for a much larger OSCE summit scheduled for Kazakhstan that will follow on 1-2 December in Astana, that nation’s capital.

A prime theme of the OSCE summit, which marks Lithuania’s accession to the  chairmanship of OSCE, is media freedom and safety of journalists.

Details were released on 5 October by the Ministry (more here), which also put on its website this photo of the team preparing for the series of foreign trips culminating in the OSCE summit.

Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: ‘The True Taste of Yiddish Language and Literature — and Litvak Culture’

This journal sincerely hopes the VYI’s director, Professor Sarunas Liekis, will report to the OSCE on the failure of Lithuanian prosecutors to abandon the lamentable investigation into his own institute’s librarian, 88 year old Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, who has, along with other Holocaust Survivors, been the victim of an ultranationalist state-sponsored campaign of defamation. Details here. These are grave violations of human rights that were duly brought to the attention of the OSCE in December 2009.

The role of the press has been vital in these sad events.

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‘The Baltic Times’ Does it Again

Posted on 2 September 2010 by staff2

The 2 September 2010 issue of the Baltic Times carried an unsigned editorial on the Opinion page that refers to Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, and the author of Operation Last Chance [excerpt here], as someone who ‘plays Moscow’s political games’, in line with local far-right efforts to tar with a McCarthyist brush of alleged communism those who speak out against racism, antisemitism, and Holocaust revisionism.

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Mindaugas Peleckis interviews Dovid Katz

Posted on 21 August 2010 by staff
  • O P I N I O N
  • Questions from Mindaugas Peleckis and answers from  Dovid Katz (Text of documents sent by email on 21 August 2010).
  • [Update: This interview resulted in the article published in Čikagos aidas on 16 Dec 2010. The unabridged text was posted on this page on 23 Dec 2010, by agreement of the interviewer and the interviewee.]

1.  I would like to talk to you about Jewish-Lithuanian relationships. You’ve published the wonderful book  ‘Lithuanian Jewish Culture’, which sheds light on many things concerning Jewish life in Lithuania and around it. What do you think about when Lithuanians became, so to say, antisemitic? In  the 19th and 20th centuries? Or earlier?

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Red-Brown Bill with Two Years of Jailtime for Disagreeing with Government’s Position is Signed into Law

Posted on 29 June 2010 by staff

A regrettable new law passed by the Lithuanian parliament was signed into law by the president. Full text of the law.  In English translation. The move followed adoption of a similar statute by Hungary’s new right-wing government.

The Jewish community’s response to the new law

The new law criminalizes debate on the Holocaust and World War II, imposing punishments that include prison sentences of up to two years for those who would argue that Soviet crimes in Lithuania did not constitute genocide (hence: upon those who would challenge the notion that ‘Soviet and Nazi crimes are equal’). The opposing view (e.g. of this website) holds that Soviet crimes in Lithuania were horrendous but did not constitute genocide (following Donskis 2009, Katz 2009 etc; see page on Soviet crimes and draft response to the Prague Declaration).

Continue reading →

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Tepid Response from the Lithuanian Institute of History on the New Red-Brown Jailtime Law, plus: Will Judaic Studies Specialists Finally Speak up?

Posted on 17 June 2010 by staff

The Lithuanian Institute of History’s less than impressive response to the 15 June parliamentary amendment of the criminal code.  BNS report.

Hopefully individual historians will respond rather more vigorously, especially those who specialize in Judaic and Holocaust studies, who risk further loss of credibility in the wake of continued silence.

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Seimas Amends Criminal Code to Make Way for New Red-Brown Jailtime Law

Posted on 15 June 2010 by staff

The Lithuanian parliament amended the criminal code ‘to envisage criminal penalties for supporting, denying or downgrading crimes committed by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany’ recommending ‘up to two years in prison’. The amendment’s initiator explained that the ‘changes were based on the European Union’s obligation to member-nations to take the necessary measures to ensure penalties for public support for genocide crimes’.  BNS report.

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Klaipeda Court Approves Public Swastikas as Symbol of ‘Lithuania’s Historical Heritage’

Posted on 19 May 2010 by staff

While threatening prison sentences for persons holding the belief that the Holocaust is not equal to Soviet crimes, a sudden new trend of ‘liberalism’ appears regarding public displays of swastikas. A court in Klaipeda approved the Nazi symbols on the grounds that they are ‘Lithuania’s historical heritage rather than symbols of Nazi Germany’. The net result it that now the only illegal symbols are the Soviet ones, which are not used by anyone, other than aged anti-Nazi war veterans celebrating the Ninth of May. Hence, it is all part and parcel of the movement legitimizing a pro-fascist view of twentieth century history.

BNS report.  Delfi report.   Alfa.lt report following the protest of Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office. JTA report on the court’s decision and Dr Zuroff’s response. More details here.  See page on Swastikas.

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Prosecutors Work Overtime to Nix Baltic Pride Parade in Vilnius

Posted on 4 May 2010 by staff

The same state prosecution service that works to send Holocaust Survivors to eternity as suspected war criminals (neither charging nor clearing the innocent persons defamed); and, that is pleased to provide protection and the facade of dignity for neo-Nazi marches (see below at 11 March 2008 and 11 March 2010) spared no effort to ban the 8 May 2010 Baltic Pride parade.

In a typically unbelievable statement worthy of central casting, the head of the Prosecutor General’s office told BNS: ‘I appealed to the court after receipt of information about possible disturbances. The information is confidential, and I would like to refrain from further comment, however, the data we have in our possession suggests there is a possibility of certain disturbances, which we would not want’. 

 Another classic: ’Participants of the rally could be targets of violence, we can’t have a police officer for each of them. The event would be protected in its specific location, however, nobody can forecast a crowd’s actions’, he added. Asked whether he had information about a planned riot, Petrauskas said he could not ‘state this specifically’ according to the BNS report. BNS report here.

[8 May 2010 update: While in the end forced by courts to allow the Pride parade (which the capital's police easily managed), police provided protection and status to the neo-Nazi marchers who for hours flaunted fascist flags near the Reval Lietuva Hotel, flanked by flags of the European Union, Lithuania and various other member states.  Eyewitness report and photos here.]

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‘Baltic Times’ Condemns Riga City Council for Trying to Nix March 16th Waffen SS March in the Capital’s Center

Posted on 11 March 2010 by staff2

The Baltic Times, in the spirit of its increasing pattern of delivering up far-right views dressed up as impartial news coverage, did it again today. The front page banner headline reads ‘Riga Council in Civil Rights Attack’ with the caption to the large front page photo that condemns the city council for trying to block ‘war veterans and others’, as the anonymous authors put it (the article is signed by ‘Staff and wire reports, Riga), from being able to ‘exercise their rights in commemorating wartime duties and efforts’.

There was no mention that these are Waffen SS veterans and that the annual ceremony in the capital’s center is an affront to free Europe and Holocaust victims and survivors.

That an allegedly impartial newspaper would regard a noble attempt to legally block a  pro-Nazi march, on the part of elected officials in a European Union country, as a ‘civil rights attack’ in a news headline is shocking. PDF of the article here.

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Slanted ‘Baltic Times’ Coverage of Lithuanian Parliament’s Work on new Red-Brown Jailtime Law

Posted on 8 October 2009 by staff

Supposedly impartial Baltic Times coverage of a later version of the proposed law that would max out at just two years of imprisonment for disagreeing with the state’s version of ‘Soviet and Nazi genocide’.

The BT report also gloats that ‘Earlier this year, the members of the European Parliament decided that Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany were equal’ (cf. materials on the Prague Declaration page). [14 September 2010: On the law eventually passed, in June 2010, see here].

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Seminars in Secret at the Annual Summer Program in Yiddish when the Topic is Holocaust Obfuscation

Posted on 1 August 2009 by staff

 

Seminars on Holocaust Obfuscation had to be held in private apartments during the Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature. Memoirs have been published by  Julia Blaukopf (Photographic Interiors, Pennsylvania); Jana Hock (Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch);  Michael Cohen [more recent article here],  Josh Markovitz (both UCLA). There have been comments in the Guardian and the Nation.

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute staff list distributed to summer course students was purged of staff who spoke out publicly on behalf of the accused survivors and against ‘Double Genocide’. Lectures were convened at private apartments on August 10, 17, 19, 20 (more details at: Events).  Image from 17 August; first and last slides; slide on European Parliament issues; more at Jamie Ehrenpreis’s Facebook site. Group of participants after the 19 Aug. presentation; more by J. Ehrenpreis here.

Austrian Holocaust museum volunteer Adalbert Wagner set up power-point facilities, generously lent by the Green House Holocaust Museum. The organization of these lectures was assisted by VYI summer course participants  Dr Judy Freier, Dr Ilya Levin, Prof Abraham Lichtenbaum, Daniel Nemenyi, Dr Shimon Samuels, Berti Wagner. Larry Mandel, Daniel Nemenyi and  Martina Ravagnan for opened up their homes to one lecture each.

It is thought that the ‘Dirty Tricks Department’ of the Lithuanian government unit aiming to manipulate Jewish issues is planning for the Yiddish institute to become a PR tool of the government, with the Yiddish professor of Bloomington, Indiana brought over summertime and for select events to provide the necessary Yiddish Studies Cover for several weeks a year.

UPDATES HERE

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Vilna Ghetto Victims’ List Substituted for War Criminals’ List in the Baltic Times; VYI Chief calls the Association of Lithuanian Jews ‘Extreme Right-Wingers’

Posted on 29 May 2009 by staff

Part of a list of Jewish victims of the Vilna Ghetto (including fallen resistance hero Yechiel Sheinboim) appears in the Baltic Times instead of the captioned list of alleged Nazi-allied murderers (zoom-in).

The young foreign reporter was wholly innocent; a still unidentified source provided the wrong list. An obscure and ambiguous correction appeared the following week.

Moreover, director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute Sarunas Liekis is quoted (misquoted?) in the article (column 2), as calling the last active group of Litvak Holocaust survivors in the world (the ALJ in Tel Aviv) ‘extreme right-wingers’, adding that ‘scholars don’t talk to them’. Although now aged, these survivors’ ranks still include prominent Holocaust scholars.

The Baltic trend to delegitimize Holocaust survivors and their supporters is part of the wider series of attempted conceptual realignments deemed ‘necessary’ to propagate the Double Genocide bandwagon, and obfuscation of the Holocaust, within the context of regional unltranationalism.

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Parliamentary Proposal to Curtail Free Speech that would Disagree with Red-Brown Equivalence; 3 Years Imprisonment Envisaged

Posted on 21 May 2009 by staff

Proposal 154(1), registered by the Seimas (parliament) of Lithuania, would impose up to three years of imprisonment for one who ‘denies, severely diminishes or justifies the genocide accomplished by Communism or Fascism’ etc.  English translation. 9 June 2009 summary.

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Vicious Attack on Bold Lithuanian Journalist Andrius Navickas

Posted on 21 March 2009 by staff

After the intrepid journalist and human rights advocate Andrius Navickas (see Bold Citizens) protested to the press commission about the front page cartoon of the Jew and the Gay controlling the world, a caricature of his head and body was inserted in both figures on the front page of a mass circulation newspaper. This had the effect of deterring others in the public arena who might have wished to make their opinions known about the proliferation of 1930s style hate materials appearing on the front page of mass circulation newspapers.

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Parliamentarians Explain that Red-Brown Criminalization Law is Necessary to ‘equate the crimes of Soviet Genocide with the Nazi Genocide’

Posted on 19 March 2009 by staff

Delfi.lt reports that ‘in the Lithuanian legal system, acts regarding the the crimes of Soviet genocide, i.e. their denial or justification, are not criminalized, and, experts say, this is an obstacle in attempting to equate the crimes of Soviet genocide with the Nazi genocide’.  Full English translation.  BNS’s English summary.

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Dissenting Academic Rapidly Replaced with Foreign Stand-in at the Jerusalem Book Fair; Dr Rachel Margolis Betrayed Again

Posted on 1 February 2009 by staff

After authoring the book on Litvak culture for the Lithuanian section at the Jerusalem Book Fair, the editor of this website declined to attend to chair the Yiddish culture session, when he was asked not to bring to the fair Dr Rachel Margolis, resident in Rechovot; she is one of the heroic Jewish partisans defamed by the Double Genocide industry.

The Lithuanian government unit running these affairs rapidly replaced him with the Yiddish professor from the Borns Jewish Studies program at Indiana University (Bloomington).

The ‘Book Fair Affair’ was widely reported. See: Haaretz: ‘When Lithuania was Yiddishland’ by Raphael Ahren; also: comments by Milan Chersonski, editor of the Jewish community’s periodical, Jerusalem of Lithuania: ‘It’s not just about the Jerusalem Book Fair’ (Jan-March 2009); May 2010 update on Dr Margolis’s situation here.

More details here on the ‘Book Fair Affair’ and the further cooperation of the Borns Jewish Studies program with the nationalist establishment in Vilnius.

UPDATES TO JUNE 2011 SEE HERE

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Dr Efraim Zuroff’s Seminar at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute is Blackballed

Posted on 1 November 2008 by staff

Blackballing [= cancellation of invitation] of VYI seminar presentation by Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office.  Note: Dr. Zuroff was very cordially received by various state agencies in Vilnius, and the mayor’s office and elementary school of his ancestral town Ligmiyan (Linkmenys).

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Legal Ban on Nazi and Soviet Symbols in the Spirit of Red-Brown ‘Equivalence by Law’, a Blow to Freedom of Speech

Posted on 17 June 2008 by staff

BBC report, ‘Lithuanian ban on Soviet symbols’. A legally imposed ‘equivalence’ of ‘Nazi and Soviet symbols’ came as a grave moral blow to elderly veterans of the war against Nazism, and their proud families (notwithstanding an addition to the law technically exempting veteran memorials).

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Police Come Looking for Holocaust Survivors Rachel Margolis and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky

Posted on 7 May 2008 by staff2

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