Monthly Archives: October 2014

Latvian Musical that Sanitizes Holocaust Perpetrator Starts its Grand Tour



New Musical, “Sugar Herbert Sugar” Glorifies Herberts Cukurs

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REACTIONS & REPORTS:

From Jerusalem: EFRAIM ZUROFF IN I24; IN THE JERUSALEM POST; IN THE LONDON JEWISH CHRONICLE

From Riga: ALEKSANDRS FEIGMANIS IN DEFENDING HISTORY

From Liepaja: MIKE COLLIER REVIEWS PREMIERE IN LSM.LV

ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS

Tickets sold 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” or Just “Springtime for Hitler”?)

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Arts, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Herberts Cukurs, Human Rights, Latvia, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Latvian Musical that Sanitizes Holocaust Perpetrator Starts its Grand Tour

Antisemitism and Banking 



O P I N I O N   /   A N T I S E M I T I S M

by Ivo Mosley  (London)

To Vita Rose Mosley, born 21 October 2014 

A good deal of today’s nationalist and right-wing antisemitism rests upon the fantasy that “the Jews” control the world through finance and banking. Nor is the same fantasy entirely absent from left-wing antisemitism, which currently tends to concentrate itself on criticism of Israel.

The fact that some Jews are very good at banking is, apparently, enough to justify race-hate in the antisemite’s mind. Of course, a number of Jews are also prominent as scientists, civil rights activists, generals, hairdressers, actors, musicians, historians, etcetera, without anyone blaming science, civil rights, theatre, hairdressing, war, music, history, etcetera on “the Jews.”  This highlights one of the traditional functions of antisemitism: if something is obviously bad, “the Jews” can be reached for as a scapegoat.

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An Open Letter to Inna Rogatchi



O P I N I O N

Dear Dr. Rogatchi,

Warm congratulations on your excellent film, The Lessons of Survival. Conversations with Simon Wiesenthal. We encourage all our readers to see the film, and those who live in or near Vilnius to attend the screening this Tuesday 28 October 2014 at 5 PM at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library, followed  by a distinguished panel discussion.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Vilnius Jewish Public Library", Double Games, Film, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on An Open Letter to Inna Rogatchi

Wiesenthal Center Condemns “Miss Hitler” Contest on Russia’s Largest Social Network



JERUSALEM—The Simon Wiesenthal Center today expressed outrage at the announcement of an online beauty pageant for “Miss Hitler 2014” as publicized by a neo-Nazi group on VKontakte, Russia’s largest social networking service. Contestants who are supporters of Nazism and sufficiently antisemitic may submit a Nazi-themed selfie to compete for this dubious prize.

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Posted in Arts, Celebrations of Fascism, Efraim Zuroff, Events, News & Views | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Wiesenthal Center Condemns “Miss Hitler” Contest on Russia’s Largest Social Network

The Holocaust: A Photographic and Musical Tribute



O P I N I O N   /   M U S I C

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

 

MUSICAL AND PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION HERE

 

I know persons within my circle of acquaintances who refuse to look at the terrible pictures that this video exhibits. Photographs of Jewish victims of beatings, slayings.  Pictures of dead Jewish victims.  Pictures of local collaborators in the process of helping the Nazis in killing Jews.

These persons find those historical pictures too offensive, too terrible, too awful, for their taste.  They are not able too look at them, they are far too sensitive to put up with such awful scenes.

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Posted in Arts, Latvia, Lithuania, Music, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roland Binet | Comments Off on The Holocaust: A Photographic and Musical Tribute

Ukraine’s “Centrist” Leaders Honor Holocaust-Era Nazi Collaborators as “Heroes”



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.

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Posted in Bandera, Collaborators Glorified, News & Views, Symbology, Ukraine | Comments Off on Ukraine’s “Centrist” Leaders Honor Holocaust-Era Nazi Collaborators as “Heroes”

Ukraine’s President Poroshenko Proclaims Day of Fascist Group’s Founding as National Holiday



UKRAINE  |  COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED

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.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Ukraine | Comments Off on Ukraine’s President Poroshenko Proclaims Day of Fascist Group’s Founding as National Holiday

A Second Political Case



O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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My Monday  morning began with confusion. Usually the first thing I do on a Monday morning is prepare a work-report on the week gone by, but the police called me Friday, August 29, 2014, and later delivered a summons ordering me to appear at nine o’clock on September first at the office of Ovidijus Brazys, police investigator with the criminal police department of the Šiauliai municipal police commissariat, in room 312 at Purienų street no. 48, Šiauliai.

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Posted in Aleksandras Bosas, EU, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prosecutors & Police 'Investigate' DH Author Evaldas Balčiūnas | Comments Off on A Second Political Case

Henke’s Legend



M E M O I R S

by Shloyme Gilinsky

This extract from a Litvak memoir by Shloyme Gilinsky who was born in 1888 in Lingmyán (now Linkmenys, Lithuania), and died in 1961 in the US, has been translated from the original Yiddish by the author’s son, Victor Gilinsky (Los Angeles, California).

Victor Gilinsky writes:

Gilinsky picture

The teacher, Shloyme Gilinsky, is at the left.

“My father was born in 1988 in Lingmyan and died in 1961 in Lexington NY, on a summer holiday. He lived n NYC. I have attached my favorite picture of him—teaching a class, probably around the time of World War I. Note the kids have very short hair—just growing back after having their heads shaved to deal with lice, and they don’t have shoes.  This was their only way to the larger world, like in an earlier generation the Gaon’s Kloyz, and the ferment around it, was for him.

“I’m in Santa Monica. I had a small memorial plaque put on a bench facing the ocean near the Santa Monica pier. I was allowed three lines of 24 characters each so I had to figure out how to sum him up with that limitation. I had them inscribe: 

Shloyme Gilinsky d 1961

Started Yiddish schools 

in Poland, mourned them

“I found the material in handwritten notes in my mother’s files that I only recently went through. She sent most of his stuff to Yivo but when I got in touch with them they could hardly find anything. It seems to have disappeared. Nor did they seem to have any interest in it. I have some other material but the handwriting is just too hard to read.”

I write this in nineteen hundred sixty in New York, a long way from my beginnings before the turn of the century in a Lithuanian shtetl. We Jews called it Duksht. The Lithuanians in the surrounding countryside had their own name, as did the Poles, and the ruling Russians. But we lived apart from the rest, in our own world, a situation that was about to change. I want to tell you how Henke’s legend awakened me and the other young Jewish boys in town to the broader world, and how it ultimately set the course of my life.

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Annual Memorial for the Jews of Svintsyán (Švenčionys): Small but Well Done



by Defending History Staff

Svintsyán [Švenčionys] — Some fifty people gathered in the forest at midday today at the mass grave at Poligón, outside Švenčioneliai (Yiddish: Svintsyánke), in northeastern Lithuania, where around 8,000 Jews were murdered on 7 and 8 October 1941 after more than a week of barbaric incarceration and humiliation. The number includes nearly all the Jews of the county-seat town Švenčionys (Svintsyán) as well as the Jewish citizens of a number of towns and villages in the region, including (Yiddish names first in the following list, followed by current Lithuanian or Belarusian names): Dugelíshik (Naujasis Daugėliškis), Duksht (Dūkštas), Haydútsetshik (Adutiškis), Ignalíne (Ignalina), Koltnyán (Kaltanėnai), Kaméleshik (Kimelishki, Belarus), Labonár (Labanoras), Lingmyán (Linkmenys), Líntep (Lyntupy, Belarus), Maligán (Mielagėnai), Podbródzh (Pabradė), Saldúteshik (Saldutiškis), Salemánke (Salamianka), Stayátseshik (Stajotiškės), Svintsyánke (or Nay-SvintsyánŠvenčionėliai), and Tseykín (Ceikiniai).

Misha (Meyshke) Shapiro (at left), head of a region’s tiny remnant Jewish community, chairs the annual commemoration in the forest at a mass grave where 8,000 Jews were killed in two days in October of 1941.

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Events, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Svintsyán (Švenčionys), Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Annual Memorial for the Jews of Svintsyán (Švenčionys): Small but Well Done