Opinion

International Christian Embassy Directors in Lithuania Speak Out on the Glorification of Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis

Posted on 17 May 2012 by staff

Michael and Fausta Maass, directors of the Lithuania section of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) issued the following statement today.

Michael and Fausta Maass, directors of the Lithuania section of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ)

“The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Lithuanian section, calls upon the Lithuanian government and parliament, the Kaunas mayor’s office, the Church of the Resurrection in Kaunas, and other possibly participating entities involved in the ceremonies honoring Juozas Ambrazavičius-Brazaitis, to cancel any and all such ceremonies.

Ambrazevičius, the “provisional government” of 1941 which he led, and the closely associated Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) were complicit in the murders of many thousands of Lithuanian Jews before and during the German occupation of Lithuania.

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Archbishop Adds his Blessing to the Nazi Collaborator being Reburied with Full Honors

Posted on 11 May 2012 by staff

Many usually admiring readers of Bernardinai.lt were shocked today by an article  by Archbishop S. Tamkevičius which contains the following paragraph (here in translation), and which was not followed by any editor’s comment.

“This month Juozas Brazaitis-Ambrazevičius, the former prime minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania who worked for the anti-Nazi underground during the German occupation and after the war actively made the case for Lithuanian independence in the world, returns from America to Lithuania. His contributions to Lithuania are enourmous. But he didn’t just love Lithuania, he also loved God. Having chosen for himself in his youth friends who were sincerely faithful young people, and taking active part in the activities of the Futurists, he matured into a profoundly faithful man and for his entire life was consistently faithful to the principles of Christianity and nationalism. Professor Juozas Brazaitis is a living example of how much faith gives to a person who adheres to it consistently.”

The “return to Lithuania” refers to the flying over and reburying with full honors, at the culmination of four days of commemorative festivities, of the “prime minister” of the 1941 Nazi puppet “Provisional Government” in Kaunas which oversaw the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust at the hands of its associated LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), and then during the first weeks of Nazi genocide between late June and early August 1941. There was no public statement of regret from Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) during his subsequent decades in the United States, where he died in 1974.

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“Correcting the Past”

Posted on 8 May 2012 by staff

OPINION

by Milan Chersonski

 

On 2 May 2012, the Lithuanian mass media reported that the mayor of Kaunas, Andrius Kupčinskas, in his capacity as chief of a special working group, announced that the remains of Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, chairman of the Lithuanian Provisional Government in 1941, who was buried in Connecticut in 1974, will be transported to Lithuania for a reburial with full honors.

MORE COVERAGE HERE

Kupčinskas said that the remains of Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis will be brought to Vilnius Airport on 17 May 2012, honored in the capital, and then solemnly escorted to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Kaunas and placed into a columbarium in the church yard. Lithuanian Government officials have confirmed the announcement.

It was not however reported precisely who took the decision or precisely why the decision to rebury Ambrazevičius’s remains was taken. These are not the remains of an ordinary citizen. He was the leader of Lithuania’s 1941 Provisional Government (PG). Transporting his remains to the motherland is a state act, which carries with it the implication of immortalizing the memory of a historical figure in the solemn chronicles of the nation.

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ИСПРАВЛЯЮТ ПРОШЛОЕ

Posted on 7 May 2012 by staff

М Н Е Н И Е

Милан Херсонский

2-го мая 2012-го года СМИ Литвы сообщили: мэр Каунаса Андрюс Купчинскас, руководящий специально созданной рабочей группой, заявил, что прах бывшего в 1941-ом году председателем Временного правительства Литвы Юозаса Амбразявичюса-Бразайтиса (далее – Ю.Амбразявичюс), , будет доставлен в Литву из США, где в 1974-м году он был похоронен в штате Коннектикут.

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“Moderate Litvak” Status is Conferred by his Highness, the Norwegian Property Magnate cum Editor-in-Chief of Vilnius

Posted on 1 May 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

 

Getty Images

Thought experiment: Imagine an African American in the city of Columbia, South Carolina, being called an extremist or fanatic for peacefully expressing the opinion that it is offensive for the Confederate flag to be hoisted on the grounds of the state capitol building. Imagine him or her being called extremist or fanatic for failing to be grateful that the flag was, after much protest, moved from atop the dome to the mere grounds of the capitol and its design slightly changed to conform to the Confederate Battle Flag (as a “concession”).

Imagine if a snow-white editor of a web journal singled out for David Duke style praise “Moderate African Americans” who just say “Thank you” when a pathetic morsel of PR is offered up by local authorities in the face of mounting international opprobrium.

There would be public outrage at the racism.

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The History of Three “Lithuanian Freedom Army” (LFA) Colonels Who Served the Nazis

Posted on 28 April 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

I will begin with a recent document I found while collecting information about the Lithuanian Freedom Army (LFA), an organization formed during World War II which present-day historians are attempting to portray as an organizer of the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania.

On 31 October 2002, President Valdas Adamkus issued decree no. 1965 titled “On Promoting Volunteer Soldiers to the Rank of Colonel”  which gave the rank of colonel to three “members of the armed resistance: volunteer soldiers and soldiers of Lithuania’s pre-war military,” namely, Tauras military district chief Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas (posthumously); Vytautas military district chief Vincas Kaulinis-Miškinis (posthumously); and Vytis military district chief Jonas Krištaponis (also posthumously). Five years later the president noticed he had made a mistake regarding one surname and on 5 January 2007, issued decree no. 1K-849 to correct the mistake, replacing Jonas Krištaponis with Juozas Krikštaponis (aka Krištaponis).

Regarding the anti-Soviet resistance, there really isn’t any argument: most of the LFA fighters heroically fought against the occupiers and died in that struggle.

Regarding the anti-Nazi resistance, however, many doubts are raised. These doubts arise because of the LFA’s position on the mass murder of Jews.

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Thinking About Those Anniversaries of 2011. . .

Posted on 25 April 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Milan Chersonski

On 21 September 2010, that year’s annual commemorative event was held in the forest of Ponár (Paneriai) at the monument to the seventy thousand Jews who were murdered there and whose remains were then burned at the site.  Shortly before the ceremony’s conclusion it was announced that the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) had decided to declare the year 2011 the “Year of Commemorating Lithuanian Residents who Became Victims of Holocaust.” The parliament’s move came as a complete surprise to the Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC). The country’s Jewish community had appealed neither to the president of Lithuania nor to the parliament with any such request.

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Baltic “Double Genocide” Discourse Slips into Naive American Jewish Articles on Lithuania

Posted on 24 April 2012 by staff

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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РАЗМЫШЛЕНИЯ О ЮБИЛЕЯХ 2011-го ГОДА

Posted on 23 April 2012 by staff

М Н Е Н И Е

Милан Херсонский

 

21-го сентября 2010-го года, – в Паняряйском лесу, возле памятника 70-ти тысячам расстрелянных, а затем и сожженных евреев проходил ежегодный траурный митинг. Незадолго до его окончания было объявлено, что Сейм постановил провозгласить 2011-й год «Годом памяти жителей Литвы, ставших жертвами Холокоста». Постановление Сейма было полной неожиданностью для Еврейской общины Литвы (далее – ЕОЛ): ни к президенту Литвы, ни в Сейм, ни к правительству ЕОЛ с такой просьбой не обращалась.

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Three Progressive Members of Lithuania’s Parliament Ask Prosecutors to Investigate Threats by Genocide Center’s “Chief Specialist”

Posted on 15 April 2012 by staff

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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Lithuanian Neo-Nazi Leader Calls for Murder of MPs

Posted on 12 April 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

Ričardas Čekutis, “chief specialist” at Lithuanian’s state-sponsored Genocide Center in Vilnius old town, a fascist party leader and co-organizer of the annual neo-Nazi marches through Vilnius, has again made controversial comments on Facebook, this time apparently calling upon other Lithuanian neo-Nazis to murder three MPs. Two of the three are signatories to the Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) first published in DefendingHistory.com and presented to the president of the European Parliament in Strasbourg last month.

Confirming suspicions that SYD had angered not just the clique of apparatchiks who earn a good living from the Double Genocide industry in this part of the world, and had made wider waves in the Lithuanian neo-Nazi underground, Čekutis seemed to call for someone to shoot MPs Vytenis Andriukaitis, Justinas Karosas—both of whom signed the SYD—and the MP Petras Austrevičius.

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MP Vytenis Andriukaitis: Open Letter to Genocide Center “Chief Specialist” Ričardas Čekutis

Posted on 12 April 2012 by staff

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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Discussion: Ambassador Linas Linkevičius and Geoff Vasil

Posted on 10 April 2012 by staff
O P I N I O N

An  English translation of Ambassador Linas Linkevičius’s recent article on Delfi.lt, followed by Geoff Vasil’s reply on DefendingHistory.com.

When Will We Comprehend the Whole Truth about the Holocaust?

by Linas Linkevičius

10 April 2012

 

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was characterized by diversity of religious belief and religious tolerance. Neither is it any accident that Lithuania was called the Northern Jerusalem for centuries. Cultural tolerance was the pride and strength of our country. Why is it that we have to speak of this in the past tense? Who edited our genetic code?

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Light and Darkness Do Not Mix

Posted on 6 April 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

 

Saulius Beržinis is an astounding filmmaker. Somehow the Lithuanian director of documentaries has a knack for drawing out frank admissions on camera, even from collaborators who recount how they murdered Jews.

Beržinis has a great reputation in Holocaust studies around the world, but, as the saying goes, a prophet is often unrecognized in his native land, and the cloak of invisibility around the Lithuanian Holocaust cast by the activists in the Double Genocide industry has marginalized the documentary maker at home, where his “The Happy Faces of the Murderers” is basically unknown.

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Some Psycho-Sexual Undercurrents of the Lithuanian Independence Day Nazi March

Posted on 22 March 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

 

Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas)

Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas) is senior analyst, contributing editor and a regular columnist at DefendingHistory.com. His columns to date appear on Vasil’s Page.

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Back in 2008 a friend and I put subtitles to the march by Lithuanian neo-Nazis through the capital, Vilnius, on independence day, and put the video with subtitles up on YouTube. Back then there was almost zero mention of the march where openly fascist youth chanted slogans about attacking and killing Jews and Russians, and the de rigueur “Juden raus.” Following the YouTube posting and as news travelled around the world, certain Lithuanian media figures and politicians felt the need to at least say something. Not much, but something.

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Will Intellectuals in Western Countries Continue their Silence on Latvia’s Glorification of Hitler’s Waffen SS?

Posted on 19 March 2012 by staff

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

by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium)

RIGA—The day is a festive one despite the gray and low sky. Young pretty girls have bunches of roses which they soon distribute to elderly and solemn gentlemen arriving, row upon row in an interminable procession. Numerous national flags are held in a heraldic and staid way by young men forming a kind of double guard of honor.


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1500 Honor the Waffen SS at Riga’s Liberty Monument; Event is Praised by Latvia’s President, Condemned by Council of Europe’s Commission on Racism

Posted on 16 March 2012 by staff

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

by Dovid Katz

 

RIGA—According to most estimates, there were around 1500 participants today in the city-center ceremony honoring the Waffen SS, about 1000 police, and about one hundred protesters who turned out in opposition to the event.

The ongoing campaign by some East European governments to repackage far-right ultranationalist politics and policies (with concomitant antisemitic, racist and Nazi-glorifying undertones) as a wholesome British-conservative-style “center right” has suffered a major blow.  The battleground of ideas has in recent weeks shifted to the annual Waffen SS commemoration ceremony held at Liberty Monument, the symbolic heart of the capital of Latvia, with the blessing of some of the nation’s top leaders.

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Once Again, Moral Abdication at the American Embassy in Vilnius?

Posted on 10 March 2012 by staff

C O M M E N T

In contrast to its potent and convincing public response to neo-Nazi events in the center of  Vilnius in earlier years, the current leadership of the American embassy in the Lithuanian capital has followed a pattern disturbing to many Americans, of failing to even mention what America’s values are in commenting in official communications on both a neo-Nazi march and a pro-tolerance march, both scheduled for tomorrow, Lithuania’s independence day.

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Monica Lowenberg in Dialogue with Latvia’s Ambassador to the UK

Posted on 5 March 2012 by staff

D E B A T E

From the 2009 Waffen SS march in Riga. Photo Ilmars Znotins.

Monica Lowenberg is the creator of the international petition against this year’s Waffen SS march scheduled for 16 March 2012 in the heart of Riga, Latvia’s capital city. The petition has to date attracted some six thousand signatures from every part of the planet.

Its author approached the Latvian ambassador to the UK for support.

Below is his letter of 1 March (as PDF here). It is followed by the text of Monica Lowenberg’s 5 March reply, supplied to DefendingHistory.com for publication.

 

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I: The Latvian Ambassador to Monica Lowenberg (1 March 2012) Continue reading →

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Democracy, Events, History, Latvia, News, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off

March 11th: A Grand Opportunity for the Lithuanian Human Rights Community — and the People of Vilnius

Posted on 4 March 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

When three of us from the DefendingHistory.com community headed out from Vilnius on February 16th to confront the neo-Nazi march in central Kaunas, we were sure we would be joined by dozens, or more, true lovers of Lithuania  —  folks who cannot remain silent that perverted political leadership allows today’s neo-Nazis to achieve free reign in the center of a great city in the middle of the nation’s cherished independence day. Folks who cannot let the glorification of stylized swastikas (including the “Lithuanian swastika“), and white armbands (celebrating the LAF Holocaust perpetrators of 1941) go unchallenged in the country with the largest rate of murder of its civilian Jewish population in all Holocaust-era Europe. Folks who want to send at least some modicum of support to today’s minorities. And a message to the world that the neo-Nazis do not represent Lithuanian society.

It was a shock to find in Kaunas on February 16th, that the somewhat quixotic DefendingHistory.com threesome would find itself the only visible anti-Nazi presence during the march and the rally that followed.

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The Posthumous Remaking of a Holocaust Perpetrator in Lithuania: Why is Jonas Noreika a National Hero?

Posted on 1 March 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

Who was Jonas Noreika?

Jonas Noreika (1910-1947), also known by his nom de guerre, General Vėtra, has been named by the current Lithuanian government as “an important member of the resistance” and an object of every sort of heroic commemoration.

In 1997 he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Vytis, First Degree. The same year a memorial plaque was placed on the facade of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Library in Vilnius.

Library of the Academy of Sciences in Vilnius. The red arrow marks the Noreika plaque.

The Noreika plaque

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Zingeris Statement on Planned March 11th Neo-Nazi March Fails to Mention — the Neo-Nazi March

Posted on 28 February 2012 by staff

C O M M E N T

In response to the international petition created by Olga Zabludoff asking the Lithuanian government to rescind permits for the March 11th neo-Nazi march in the center of the capital city Vilnius on the nation’s independence day, Lithuanian embassies in various countries yesterday sent their “Jewish lists” a statement dated 24 February 2012 signed by right-wing Jewish MP Emanuelis Zingeris.

The problem is that Mr. Zingeris’s eloquent statement, calling his countrymen to unity, justice and all lofty things on the nation’s independence day, does not mention with one word the actual neo-Nazi march that is the issue at hand.

It is a striking contrast with the unvarnished words from the heart of a simple Jewish resident of Vilnius about the same neo-Nazi march which DefendingHistory.com released, also yesterday, on YouTube.

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Lithuanian Radio Panel Discussion on the Seventy Years Declaration

Posted on 27 February 2012 by staff

The Seventy Years Declaration, released on 20 January 2012, was the subject of a 31 January 2012 Žinių radijas (News Radio) station panel discussion including one of the Lithuanian signatories of the declaration, Social Democratic MP Vytenis Andriukaitis, himself a signatory of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence. MP Andriukaitis was attacked by the foreign minister for signing.

MP Andriukaitis’s response won international support, and there is reference in the panel discussion to the support from British human rights champion MP Denis MacShane for all eight Lithuanian parliamentarians who signed the Seventy Years Declaration.

The other participants were rather obviously opposed to MP Andriukaitis (and the Seventy Years Declaration), making it a rather unbalanced panel: the moderator, Audrys Antanaitis; Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the 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”; it is chaired by Conservative MP Emanuelis Zingeris, the only Jewish signatory of the Prague Declaration); far-right political activist and academic Marius Kundrotas. The original Lithuanian broadcast is available here. What follows is as full as possible an English translation made from the audio.

  • The participants:
  • AA: Audrys Antanaitis
  • MK: Marius Kundrotas
  • RR: Ronaldas Račinskas
  • VA: Vytenis Andriukaitis

AA: Hello, this is Audrys Antanaitis. Today: about a history that inevitably affects our present. The so-called Wannsee Declaration [= Seventy Years Declaration] again recalls a painful past and its different interpretations. So, can the Holocaust be compared with Communist crimes? It’s said that that offends Jews. But why should Jews be offended by a reminder that the Communists also killed en masse innocent people? And in general, why have we today decided to compete on who suffered more, the victims of the Nazis or the victims of the Communists? Is this really important to the victims themselves and their families? Does talking about one’s suffering really require comparison with the sufferings of other victims?

Is it really important on what basis the mass murder was carried out, or executed? That basis will not bring the person back in any event. Today our guests are Ronaldas Racinskas, executive director of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania; historian, political scientist and member of the board of directors of the Nationalist Union Marius Kundrotas; and signatory to the Act of Restoration of Independence and vice-chairman of the Social Democratic Party Vytenis Andriukaitis. Welcome.

Various: Good day. Good day. Good morning.

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Stop the Neo-Nazi Movement in Hungary!

Posted on 26 February 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by David Surjányi

 

Dozens of people marching on the streets with flags in their hands and badges on their chest.

When they reach their destination a strange looking person steps on the podium and starts to speak. His speech is saturated with hate. He demands a “Jew-free” country. He blames the Roma people for the problems of our society.

And this is not 1944. It is 2012. Here in Hungary.

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300 Neo-Nazis March through the Center of Kaunas on Lithuanian Independence Day; They are Addressed by Members of Parliament

Posted on 16 February 2012 by staff

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

by Dovid Katz

With attention focused on the government-permission-granted central Vilnius neo-Nazi march slated for Lithuania’s March 11th independence day — now the subject of an international petition on Change.org — there was minimal foreign interest in today’s independence day neo-Nazi march and demonstration in central Kaunas, Lithuania’s second city. The March 11th independence day marks the date in 1990 when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union. Today’s holiday is on the date of the 1918 declaration of independence which heralded the rise of the modern Lithuanian state in the twentieth century. Both dates are revered by the country’s diverse minorities and factions. They represent freedom from oppression and foreign domination, and celebrate the building of a free and democratic state.

But in recent years, both dates have been hijacked by neo-Nazi groups in the heart of the country’s major cities, with the support of some members of parliament and leading political figures. There is, moreover, the proverbial blind eye of much or most of the elite classes, which serves as a contributing catalyst.

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JFN’s Andres Spokoiny in New York City Congratulates Vytenis Andriukaitis in Vilnius

Posted on 14 February 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Andres Spokoiny

 

Honorable Mr. Andriukaitis,

Your courage needs to be saluted.

I have followed with admiration your successive actions in favor of a proper appreciation of the unique crimes of the Nazi regime in Lithuania and beyond. From signing the Seventy Years Declaration to your letter to your parliamentary colleague the foreign minister, you have a shown a courage and a decency that, unfortunately, are rare in the Lithuanian political class.

You have defended the truth and the respect for the victims.

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The Lingering Legacy of Nazism

Posted on 13 February 2012 by staff

O P I N I O N

by Milan Chersonski

Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij), longtime editor (1999-2011) of Jerusalem of Lithuania, quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, was previously (1979-1999) director of the Yiddish Folk Theater of Lithuania, which in Soviet times was the USSR’s only Yiddish amateur theater company. The views he expresses in DefendingHistory.com are as always his own. Authorized translation from the Russian original by DefendingHistory.com.

Milan Chersonski at his desk. Photo © Jurgita Kunigiškytė.

 

The twentieth of January 2012 made it precisely seventy years from the day when a conference of ministries and agencies of Hitler’s Germany was held at the Marlier Villa by Lake Wannsee. It went down in history as the Wannsee Conference. Nazi officials in a business-like manner in ice blood, discussed the problems of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, the euphemism for genocide of the Jews in Europe.

Fulfillment of the Wannsee Conference decisions, which became directives, continued until the last days of the Nazi state. Not even the approach of the Red Army in the east or the successful landing of the anti-Hitler coalition in the west resulted in German leaders abandoning the project to annihilate the Jewish people. In the face of a string of crushing defeats, acute shortages of transport, ammunition, fuel and even food, the Nazis went on sending Jews to their death with a maniacal consistency.

But it would be a very serious mistake to think that the Wannsee Conference directives per se played the main role in the Final Solution of the Jewish Question here in Lithuania. In this part of the world the Nazis and their many accomplices had been quick to rob and massacre the majority of the Jewish population by December 1941. Before the Wannsee Conference.

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A Hidden Monument in Vilnius — Hopelessly Invisible?

Posted on 12 February 2012 by staff

In response to several requests from the United States, DefendingHistory.com this week asked three separate Westerners who found themselves in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, to try to see the “Flame of Hope” monument, by sculptor Leonardo Nierman, in memory of the victims of the Lithuanian Holocaust, located in the heart of the Old Town, in a yard that was in the Vilna Ghetto between September 1941 and the ghetto’s liquidation three years later.

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Lithuanian Parliamentarian Vytenis Andriukaitis, Signatory of 70 Years Declaration, Replies to Foreign Minister, Cites ‘Moustache’ Remark and the Implications of ‘Double Genocide’

Posted on 11 February 2012 by staff

 

O P I N I O N

by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis

 

The following is an authorized translation from the Lithuanian text published on Delfi.lt on 9 February 2012. It is a reply to the foreign minister’s article published a week earlier (English translation here).

Honorable A. Ažubalis, Did You Pull Such an Understanding of History out of Thin Air?

by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lithuanian Parliament

 

Honorable minister, looking at the headline of your public statement, I hoped at least that you would apologize for the position expressed earlier that “it is impossible to find any difference between Hitler and Stalin except in their moustaches (Hitler’s was smaller).” I agree with the position expressed by Dennis MacShane, member of the British House of Commons, that such jokes by foreign minister Audronius Ažubalis are inappropriate in discussing the mass murder of six million Jews.

In your public statement, you again place two signed declarations in opposition to one another. One of them — the “only true one” — the “Declaration on European Conscience and Communism” signed in Prague in 2008, maintains that the precondition for a unified Europe is a unified view of history and the ability to condemn the last century’s crimes against humanity. The second, the Seventy Years Declaration — the declaration referred to as if it were a crime and condemned by you —was adopted marking the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, a declaration which rejects attempts to trivialize the atrocities of the Jewish genocide.

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The Lingering Legacy of Nazism

Posted on 8 February 2012 by staff

М Н Е Н И Е

Милан Херсонский

 

У НАЦИЗМА НЕ ДОЛЖНО БЫТЬ БУДУЩЕГО

20 января нынешнего 2012-го года исполнилось 70 лет с того дня, когда в 1942-м году на вилле Марлир близ озера Ванзее состоялась конференция представителей министерств и ветвей власти гитлеровской Германии, которая вошла в мировую историю по названию озера – Ванзейская конференция. Это было совещание нацистских чиновников, которые деловито и хладнокровно обсуждали вопросы реализации «окончательного решения еврейского вопроса», то есть полного истребления евреев в Европе.

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Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, History, Milan Chersonski, News, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off