Monthly Archives: September 2014

Alex Ryvchin Speaks Out at Babi Yar Memorial Event in Sydney, Australia

Posted on 28 September 2014 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Alex Ryvchin

The following is the text of the opening address delivered today by Alex Ryvchin, public affairs director at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, at the memorial and monument unveiling commemorating the victims of Babi Yar near Kiev, Ukraine.

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Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the co-hosts of this event, Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants, I want to welcome you here today and to thank you for giving up your time to honour the victims of the Babi Yar Massacre.

“Today in the very places where these massacres took place, there are attempts to revise or deny the history of the Holocaust. War criminals are being rehabilitated into great patriots.”

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“Prophet Amos Awards” for Seven Human Rights Heroes in Lithuania (2014-2015)

Posted on 24 September 2014 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Defending History Staff

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On the occasion of the Jewish new year, 5775 (Sept. 2014 — Sept. 2015), starting this Wednesday evening 24 September at sundown, Defending History has announced seven symbolic (non-material) awards to individuals of extraordinary individual achievement in the field of human rights and tolerance in Lithuania. By “individual achievement” we refer to people who stood up, spoke out, and rose to the moral imperative of saying what needed to be said in the spirit of the prophets who felt an inner voice compelling their rising up, rather than in the context of a job or position at an NGO or other institution. These two genres are harmoniously complementary, and in no way demeaning to each other.

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Posted in Aleksandras Bosas, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Defending History's Person of the Year, Events, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Prophet Amos Awards” for Seven Human Rights Heroes in Lithuania (2014-2015)

N.Y. Yivo Announces Campaign for Five and a Quarter Million Dollars for new “Vilna Project”

Posted on 23 September 2014 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

 

In a widely disseminated press release today, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research announced the launch of a fundraising campaign for US $5,250,000 for the “Yivo Vilna Project.” We are told that it is for “a seven-year international project to preserve, digitize and reunite virtually Yivo’s prewar archives located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal” that will create “the largest collection of Yiddish language materials in the world.”

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Double Games, Double Genocide, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on N.Y. Yivo Announces Campaign for Five and a Quarter Million Dollars for new “Vilna Project”

Massacres of the Jews in Liepāja (Šķēde) in Fall 1941

Posted on 22 September 2014 by Defending History

M U S I C

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

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The Nazis tried to hide their crimes against humankind during World War II. They had tried to hide the fact that in the former territories of the USSR they were killing Jews on a colossal scale starting in July 1941. And not only Jews, also anyone suspected of being a communist.

Although many soldiers in the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS took pictures of Aktionen against the Jews, even kept pictures of massacres or dead Jewish bodies in their wallets, most of these photographic proofs of the Nazi crimes against humanity were destroyed, stolen from their corpses after their deaths, kept at home in Germany by descendants of these heinous and barbarous extermination soldiers, or, sometimes, recuperated by allied nations which kept them and not solely kept them, but displayed them as a testimony to these barbaric events.

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Tsemakh Shabad’s 150th Birthday Celebrated in Style at the Lithuanian Parliament

Posted on 21 September 2014 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Defending History Staff

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Asuccessful, highly compressed one-day conference, exhibition and city plaque unveiling were all shoehorned into one day, today, in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, to mark the 150th birth year of the celebrated and beloved Dr. Tsemakh Shabad (1864–1935), Vilna physician, public health advocate, benefactor, Yiddishist theoretician and builder of Yiddish educational infrastructure from elementary schools to the university-level Yivo institute. He was also a  representative in the city’s municipality. Shabad was a legend in his own time. When poor sick children in any shtetl of Vilna province, of whatever nationality or background, were in danger of imminent death from disease, there were no greater words of relief than “Dr. Shabad is on the way.”

The conference banner, a joint production of the Lithuanian parliament (Seimas), the Jewish Community of Lithuania and the Ministry of Health, featured the Yiddish Folks-gezunt (public health) logo, beloved of Dr. Shabad.

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Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Vytenis Andriukaitis, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Tsemakh Shabad’s 150th Birthday Celebrated in Style at the Lithuanian Parliament

Western Media Begins to Report on Nazi Allegiance in Parts of Ukraine’s Military

Posted on 19 September 2014 by Defending History


After 70 Years:  First state-sanctioned Nazi insignia on Ukrainian territory since 1944.  First time in Europe since 1945?

Swastika helmet in UkrainePHOTO: Bernhard Lichte / ZDF

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Rumbula and Ponár

Posted on 9 September 2014 by Defending History

M U S I C

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

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This composition, Rumbula and Ponár, memorializes the victims of the two most infamous mass murder sites of Latvia and Lithuania, Rumbula outside Riga, and Ponár (Polish Ponary, Lithuanian Paneriai) outside Vilnius. More than 130,000 people were killed in total at these two sites. The majority were Jews but there were many others of diverse ethnic and social background at Ponár.

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Posted in Arts, Latvia, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Music, News & Views, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Riga's Waffen SS Marches, Roland Binet | Comments Off on Rumbula and Ponár

Five Years of Defending History Dot Com

Posted on 6 September 2014 by Defending History

F

ive years have elapsed since this journal was founded as Holocaust in the Baltics 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).

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dovid Katz, EU, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Five Years of Defending History Dot Com

Milan Chersonski’s Open Letter to Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress (Russian Version)

Posted on 4 September 2014 by Defending History

Milan Chersonski today released the Russian text of his open letter to World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder. The English version is here; background here; statements on the subject to date. See also: Milan Chersonski section.

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Milan Chersonski is 77

Posted on 2 September 2014 by Defending History

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

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Ernst Lowenberg (1922 — 2014)

Posted on 1 September 2014 by Defending History

London: Ernst Lowenberg (1922 — 2014)

Ernst-Josef-Lowenberg-300x231

Ernst Josef Lowenberg

(28 December 1922 — 26 August 2014)

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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.

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