Tag Archives: Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism

Monica Lowenberg’s Petition to the Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK, HE Asta Skaisgirytė-Liauškienė



The text of Monica Lowenberg’s petition that appeared today on Change.org. To sign please visit:

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/he-ambassador-asta-skaisgiryt%C4%97-liau%C5%A1kien%C4%97-lithuanian-ambassador-london-uk-abandon-state-sponsored-anti-semitism-and-holocaust-obfuscation


Abandon state sponsored Antisemitism and Holocaust Obfuscation

  • To:
  • HE Ambassador Asta Skaisgirytė-Liauškienė
  • Lithuanian Ambassador for London, UK

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Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Antisemitism & Bias, Double Games, Double Genocide, Human Rights, Litvak Affairs, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Monica Lowenberg’s Petition to the Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK, HE Asta Skaisgirytė-Liauškienė

Yitzhak Arad’s Paper



The Holocaust in Lithuania, and Its Obfuscation, in Lithuanian Sources

by Yitzhak Arad

Editor’s note: Yitzhak Arad explained that Yad Vashem had refused to publish this paper, and that he did not accept the reasons given, believing that in fact politics were at work. The Defending History community is honored to be able to pubish Dr. Arad’s paper.

C O N T E N T S:

Introduction

Lithuanian Nationalism and Antisemitism Prior to the Holocaust

The First Soviet Occupation of Lithuania, 15 June 1940 – 22 June 1941 

 The Lithuanian Activist Front: Antisemitic Incitement

The German Invasion and the Organization of an “Independent” Lithuanian Government

The Period of Pogroms: Late June to Mid July 1941

The Lithuanian Press at the Time of the Pogroms: A Source of Incitement

The Lithuanian Provisional Government: Anti-Jewish Legislation

Systematic Mass Murder: German Design and Command, Lithuanian Perpetration (late July–November 1941)

Lithuanian Police Battalions and Their Role in the Murder of the Jews

The Lithuanian Catholic Church and the Holocaust

The Rewriting of Holocaust History and the Double Genocide Thesis — “The Jewish Holocaust and the Lithuanian Holocaust”

Anti-Soviet Guerilla Warfare in Lithuania

The Prague Declaration of June 2008 and the European Parliament Resolution of April 2009

Conclusion

Notes

 

Introduction

In Lithuania, as in other places in Europe conquered by Nazi Germany, a thorough and comprehensive inquiry into the tragic events that occurred compels consideration of three factors:

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Double Genocide, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yitzhak Arad’s Paper

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


 


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.

SEE ALSO:

ANDRIUKAITIS SECTION

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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Professor Konrad Kwiet Quits the Lithuanian Government’s ‘Red-Brown Commission’


The Holocaust Obfuscation movement suffered a severe blow today with the public resignation from the Lithuanian government’s red-brown commission of Professor Konrad Kwiet, a major international scholar of the Lithuanian Holocaust. The resignation had been announced verbally at the recent ‘Aftermath’ conference held in Melbourne at the Australian Centre for the Study of Jewish Civilisation.

Professor Konrad Kwiet (right) makes a point to Dovid Katz at the June 2011 Aftermath conference at Monash University in Melbourne. Photo: Ariella Leski.

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DefendingHistory.com announces Media Chronicle of Opposition to the 2008 ‘Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism’


DefendingHistory.com has announced the free availability of a frequently updated resource page that provides links for select major expressions of opposition to the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.  The page is available here or by visiting:

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‘Prague Process’ Crowd, with Lithuanian Jewish politician for cover (as usual), now proceeding with plans to ‘overhaul European history textbooks’ for Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation


The Prague Declaration proponents in European Parliamentary circles, having renamed their movement the ‘Prague Process’, are triumphantly reporting on their latest initiative to bring to fruition yet another of the movement’s stated objectives: to overhaul all the history textbooks in Europe to reflect the supposed ‘equality’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes, in other words to continue with the far right’s revision-of-history project to downgrade the Holocaust in the course of Double Genocide ideology.

As ever, the group is able at critical moments to wheel out Lithuania’s right-wing Jewish MP, Emanuelis Zingeris, himself a signatory of the Prague Declaration, who publicly resigned from his country’s Jewish community many years ago, but continues to run the ‘Jewish track’ of a complicated double-game policy that has led, in 2011, to the absurdity of a year to remember the Holocaust as well as a year to commemorate some of its local perpetrators who are glorified as ‘anti-Soviet heroes’ (see here, here and here).

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Three Years Later: Neither Charged nor Cleared


marked three years to the day since police in Vilnius came looking for Holocaust Survivors Dr Rachel Margolis (born 1921, at right of photo) and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (born 1922) in a ‘war crimes investigation’ that has still not been publicly closed.

Both women were incarcerated in the Vilna Ghetto from 1941 to 1943. Both lost their entire families to the barbarity of the Nazis and their local collaborators. They both escaped, on different days in September 1943, to join up with the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests of Lithuania. The underground forest fort, a half-hour’s drive from Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, where Fania lived with another hundred or so Jewish escapees of the Vilna Ghetto, is being allowed to sink into the ground and disappear from history’s view.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Three Years Later: Neither Charged nor Cleared

Genocide Research Center’s ‘Chief Public Relations Specialist’ Steps Up Antisemitic Campaign


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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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide, Human Rights, Media Watch, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Genocide Research Center’s ‘Chief Public Relations Specialist’ Steps Up Antisemitic Campaign

Obfuscationists planning Vilnius Holocaust Museum miles away from the City Center


Rumors are flying in the Lithuanian capital about plans to induce foreign institutions and governments to support the building of  a new Holocaust Museum at  the mass-murder site Ponár (Paneriai), where no unsuspecting tourist or visitor to Vilnius would ever see it, more than six miles out of town, unless they have prior special interest that would motivate the hiring of a taxi for that purpose.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Genocide, Museums, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Obfuscationists planning Vilnius Holocaust Museum miles away from the City Center

Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania


 


O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

NOTE: This reply to the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review paper by Rokas Grajauskas first appeared on the website of LFPR (direct link here).

[UPDATE of 1 March 2013]: The journal refused to publish a reply, but after an intervention from Prof. MEP Leonidas Donskis it was uploaded on the journal’s website for a time, and then removed.]

Rokas Grajauskas cites me in his recent article on these pages as invoking the notion Holocaust Obfuscation (a term I proposed at a London seminar in February 2008, then formally in 2009) to refer to “the efforts of the post-Communist countries to revive the memory of Stalin’s crimes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The web journal I edit, DefendingHistory.com, although dedicated primarily to the battle against trivialization of the Holocaust and the concomitant racism and antisemitism of the new Far Right in Eastern Europe, contains a page on Soviet crimes, where I wholeheartedly embrace such Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolutions as 1096 (1996) and 1481 (2006), which wisely and rightly condemn Soviet crimes. It is vital that the full extent of these crimes be documented, the victims honored, the subject properly taught in international curricula, museums and memorializing institutions established, and justice pursued to the full extent of law. It is every bit as vital that Western commitment to Baltic security and independence remain unwavering, what with a huge unpredictable neighbor “with a certain past” (and unclear future) situated to the immediate east.

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Posted in Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Hungary, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania

Statement on ‘Double Genocide’ issued by Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model Abroad


In a statement published today on its website, the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model Abroad takes note of the antisemitic foundations of the new ‘Double Genocide’ movement in Eastern Europe, and particularly in the Baltic states. It also takes the Lithuanian government to task for the 2010 law that effectively threatens imprisonment for those who reject ‘Double Genocide’.

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Six Countries Try to ‘Slip in’ Double Genocide in the ‘Stockholm Programme’; European Commission says ‘No’


Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry had announced on 14 December 2010 that it was the initiator of a new demand from six East European countries ― Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania  — to Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, that Double Genocide sentiments, and support for effective  criminalization of  the view that the Holocaust was a unique genocide, be incorporated in the new Stockholm Programme before the end of 2010. Less than a week earlier, Lithuania’s president took the same demand with her to a meeting in Brussels.

The Road from Prague to Stockholm (via Vilnius?)

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Opposition to the 2008 ‘Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism’


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NEW URL:

https://defendinghistory.com/prague-declaration/opposition

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Critiques of the 2008 Prague Declaration (Select Bibliography)


Jump to  2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014

THE PRAGUE DECLARATION AND ITS BACKGROUND

Five Occurences of the word same in the Prague Declaration:

1 “Consciousness of the crimes against humanity committed by the Communist regimes throughout the continent must inform all European minds to the same extent as the Nazi regime’s crimes did”

2 “Believing that millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized”

3 “Recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal”

4 “Establishment of 23rd August, the day of signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, in the same way Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27th”

5 “Adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes”

 

Historic Breakthroughs

25 November 2010. For the first time since the Prague Declaration was proclaimed on 3 June 2008, a group of ambassadors  has spoken out to oppose ‘Double Genocide’. Opposition to the Declaration has been mounting steadily.

‘Spurious attempts are made to equate the uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which, though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intention or result.’

Excerpt from a letter to leaders of Lithuania from the Vilnius-based ambassadors of Britain, Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, 25 November 2010

DETAILS HERE AND HERE

20 January 2012. European Parliament opposing document:

The Seventy Years Declaration

The Prague Declaration was preceded by perfectly legitimate and noble condemnations of the evils of Soviet communism in the European Union’s institutions, before this movement was hiijacked by the far right’s red-equals-brown campaigners and their government backers in the eastern part of the EU. See: Soviet Crimes.

RELATED: PAGE ON TIMOTHY SNYDER’S BLOODLANDS


2008

Holocaust Survivors protest.

British Parliament (31 January 2008): MP John Mann, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, critiques the January 2008 precursor of the ‘Prague Declaration’ [see entry for 2:30 PM, paragraph 4; see also paragraph 3].

Algemeyner Zhurnal (25 July 2008): ‘Will the world remain silent as a new and more cunning form of Holocaust Denial comes before — the European Parliament?’ [in Yiddish] (by Dovid Katz). Part II.

Jerusalem of Lithuania [publication of the Jewish Community of Lithuania] (Oct-Dec 2008): ‘Concept inflation and the criminalization of debate’ (by Leonidas Donskis).

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 3.3: 59-72: ‘Conflicting cultures of memory in Europe: New Borders between East and West?’ by Heidemarie Uhl.


2009

IPS (6 April 2009): ‘Communist ideology, as bad as Nazism?’ (by Zoltán Dujisin).

Institute for Global Jewish Affairs (1 May 2009): ‘Reviewing the Holocaust anew in multiple contexts’ (by Yehuda Bauer).

Jewish Chronicle (22 May 2009): ‘Prague’s declaration of disgrace: a European attempt to equate Communism with Nazism will falsify history’ (by Dovid Katz).

Irish Times (30 May 2009): ‘Genocide Industry has hidden agenda. Attempts at equalizing historical wrongs are often aimed at Holocaust Obfuscation’ (by Dovid Katz).

Jerusalem Post (12 July 2009): ‘A combined day of commemoration for victims of Nazism and Communism?’ (by Efraim Zuroff).

ITF [International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research] (17 August 2009): Statement of the ITF Chair regarding the European Parliament resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism’ (by Ambassador Tom Vraalsen).

Guardian (28 September 2009): ‘The Nazi whitewash. I can’t believe Eric Pickles supports Latvia’s “For Fatherland and Freedom” party, which wants to rewrite a murderous history’ (by Efraim Zuroff); alternate link.

Luciana Berger’s Blog (3 October 2009): ‘With friends like these…’ (by Luciana Berger).

OSCE Human Rights Conference in Warsaw (5 October 2009): ‘“Prague Declaration” is a project to delete the Holocaust from European history’  (by Shimon Samuels); press release; alternate link.

Guardian (20 October 2009): ‘I knew this day of Holocaust “debate” would come. Just not in my lifetime’ (by Jonathan Freedland)

Clemens Heni (26 October 2009): ‘The Prague Declaration, Holocaust trivialization and antisemitism’ by Clemens Heni. PDF.

Jewish Chronicle (29 October 2009): UK MP John Mann, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, calls the Prague Declaration ‘a sinister document’ in his ‘Europe must focus on Baltic hate’.

Jerusalem of Lithuania (Autumn 2009): Milan Chersonski, editor of Jerusalem of Lithuania, publication of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, discusses the renewed government campaign against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, in the context of the red-equals-brown movement in Europe.

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel asks the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to condemn  the  Prague Declaration.

Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (16 December 2009): Informal statement by German parliamentarian Gert Weisskirchen.

Jerusalem Post (23 December 2009): ‘Of insult and mockery’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Washington Jewish Week (30 December 2009): ‘Don’t let the Holocaust be rewritten out of history’ by Dovid Katz.


2010

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East / SPME (4 January 2010): ‘The Prague Declaration: Antisemitism with a democratic face’  by Clemens HeniAlso on WPK.

Jewish Chronicle (7 January 2010): ‘A sinister scheme to devalue the Shoah is gathering steam’ by Efraim Zuroff.

The Guardian (8 January 2010): ‘Halting Holocaust obfuscation. The Baltic ultranationalists rewriting east European history as an equal Nazi-Soviet “double genocide” must be stopped’ by Dovid KatzRepublication in Russian.

Jerusalem Post (25 January 2010): ‘Remembering accurately on International Holocaust Remembrance Day’ by Yehuda Bauer.

Haaretz (26 January 2010): ‘Shoah scholars slam European Union Parliament for Obfuscation campaign’ by Cnaan Liphshiz.

Simon Wiesenthal Center (26 January 2010): Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, responds to the Arad accusations plus plans to replace Holocaust Remembrance Day with a mixed red-brown memorial day. Excerpt: ‘And how exactly, for example, would such “joint commemorations” unfold in Lithuania? A moment of silence for Jewish citizens butchered by the Nazis and their local collaborators, followed by a moment of silence for these victimizers, later turned into “victims of Communism?” I urge Lithuania and other supporters of this drive to drop their campaign and instead preserve the memory of the Shoah and the unique suffering of its victims that is commemorated on Holocaust Memorial Day.’

Warsaw Yiddish Radio, Naye Khvalyes, 31 January 2010): radio interview in Yiddish of Dovid Katz by Katka MazurczakAlternate link.

WPK (1 February 2010):  ‘Antisemitismus und die Prager Deklaration von Juni 2008’ by Clemens Heni.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2010): Simon Round’s interview of Dr Efraim Zuroff.

The Nation (12 February 2010): Mark Weitzman, United States director of governmental affairs at the Wiesenthal Center, reports that ‘[from] his talks with US officials in Washington and on Capitol Hill, he believes that the American silence on the matter will soon change as they are beginning to understand the seriousness of the situation’.

The New York Jewish Week (16 February 2010): ‘Islamophobia and Antisemitism: Holocaust Revisionism in Germany’ by Benjamin Weinthal.

Connecticut Jewish Ledger (26 February 2010): ‘Conversation with… Dovid Katz’ by Cindy MindellPDF.

Clemens Heni’s paper at the Baltic Forum in Riga on 15 March 2010.

Jerusalem Post (2 May 2010): ‘No tolerance for false history’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Tablet Magazine (3 May 2010): ‘The Crime of Surviving’ by Dovid Katz.

The Canadian Jewish News (21 May 2010): ‘Montreal professor launches Litvak Studies Institute in Vilnius’ by David Lazarus.

WPK (3 June 2010): ‘Joachim Gauck, die Prager Deklaration und europäischer Antisemitismus heute’ by Clemens Heni.

HITB (3 June 2010): ‘Contra Prague: Declaration on Unequal Totalitarian Regimes’ by Dovid Katz.

WPK (17 June 2010): ‘„Geistige Gesundung“ – Joachim Gauck und die neueste deutsche Ideologie’ by Clemens Heni.

NPD-Blog.Info (21 June 2010): ‘Zuroff: Gaucks Kandidatur “extrem beunruhigend”’.

Jerusalem Post (27 August 2010): ‘A threat to Holocaust memory’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Illustrierte Neue Welt (August-September 2010): ‘Relativierung des Holocaust. Prof. Dovid Katz im Gespräch mit Karl Pfeifer’ by Karl Pfeifer.

Leonidas Donskis’s blog (1 September 2010): ‘When will the truth finally set us free?’ by Leonidas Donskis.

Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism (1 September 2010):  ‘Time to free Europe of this poison’ by Dovid Katz.

Guardian (14 September 2010): ‘I see why “double genocide” is a term Lithuanians want. But it appals me. To equate Soviet and nazi crimes is dishonest and historically false. Why has this poisonous idea taken such deep root?’ by Jonathan Freedland.

Central and Eastern European Watch (15 September 2010): ‘”Double Genocide” and Lithuania’ by Karl Naylor.

The Guardian (17 September 2010): ‘Lithuania’s double genocide policy’. Letter to the Editor from Professor Tessa Rajak.

‘Lithuania has taken more than a “walk-on part in British politics”. When the European parliament called on its members, in April 2009, to mark 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, and when the OSCE, in July 2009, adopted the Vilnius Declaration on increasing awareness of totalitarian crimes, we too became party to the equation of Nazi crimes with those of communism in the Baltic states. By accepting the parallelism, we also have excused collaborators, ignored the unspeakable savageries perpetrated in Lithuania between 1941 and 1945, condoned the pardoning of every single Lithuanian war criminal until today, and endorsed the prosecution of Jewish resistance fighters, whose situation remains unresolved.’

Professor Tessa Rajak (London) in The Guardian (17 Sept 2010)

The Guardian (30 September 2010): ‘Why Red is not Brown in the Baltics. Unhappily,  Timothy Snyder’s historical reassesment of the Nazi-Soviet pact coincides with Baltic ultra-nationalist agendas’ by Dovid Katz.

Canadian Jewish News (7 October 2010): ‘Nazi crimes have been downgraded in Lithuania’ by Esther Goldberg.

The Guardian (21 December 2010): ‘Why is the US silent on “double genocide”? While European countries have condemned the new Holocaust revisionism in the Baltics, America shows no moral leadership’ by Dovid Katz.   In Russian.

The Guardian (21 December 2010): ‘EU rejects eastern states’ call to outlaw denial of crimes by communist regimes. Eastern European states wanted Soviet crimes “treated according to the same standards” as those of Nazi regimes’ by Leigh Philips.

Jewish Chronicle (29 December 2010): ‘EU halts move to downgrade Shoah’ by Michel Zlotowski.


2011

DefendingHistory.com: ‘Six countries try to “slip in” Double Genocide in the “Stockholm Programme”; European Commission says: No!”

Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism (17 January 2011):   ‘Never Again’ by Lord Janner of Braunstone.  Report here.

House of Commons, UK Parliament (20 January 2011): speech by MP Denis MacShaneReport here.

DefendingHistory.com (26 January 2011): ‘A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah’ onDefendingHistory.com by Clemens Heni.

Canadian Jewish News (3 February 2011): ‘West must address Lithuanian revisionism: prof’ by David Lazarus.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2011): ‘A shameful Shoah whitewash’ in the Jewish Chronicle by Efraim Zuroff.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2011): ’Lithuania accused over Holocaust event’ in the Jewish Chronicle by Simon Rocker.

Die Tageszeitung (4 February 2011):  ‘”Diese Kampagne macht mich sehr wütend!”‘ [Interview of Dr Shimon Alperovich, chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania] by Frank Brendle.

Open Letter, signed by twenty-one persons, hand-delivered to the Embassy of Lithuania in London (7 February 2011).

Letter from the European Commission confirming the negative appraisal of 22 December 2010, regarding attempts to enact ‘Double Genocide legislation’ (21 February 2011). English translation. [A response to Didier Bertin of the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model]

Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model (25 February 2011): Open letter from Didier Bertin to Viviane Reding, vice president of the European CommissionEnglish translation.

Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model. Selection of documents.

East European Jewish Affairs (vol 41 [December] 2011, no. 3, pp. 207-221): ‘The detonation of the Holocaust in 1941: a tale of two books’ [review of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands and Alexander PrusinThe Lands Between] by Dovid Katz.


2012

Seventy European Union parliamentarians sign the Seventy Years Declaration, published on 20 January 2012, which contains the language: ‘We reject attempts to obfuscate the Holocaust by diminishing its uniqueness and deeming it to be equal, similar or equivalent to Communism as suggested by the 2008 Prague Declaration.’

Jerusalem Post (28 May 2012): ‘A new dilemma in hosting a German president’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Haaretz, Books Supplement (24 September 2012): ‘Killed by their neighbors’ [review of David Bankier’s Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania; Frank Buonagunio’s The Last Bright Days. A Young Woman’s Life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust; Ellen Cassedy’s We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust]’ by Efraim Zuroff [PDF of print edition here].

The Times of Israel (15 November 2012): ‘Efraim Zuroff, history’s lonely defender’  by Dovid Katz.

DefendingHistory.com (1 December 20120): ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania, and its obfuscation, in Lithuanian sources’ by Yizhak Arad.

London Jewish News (13 December 2012): ‘You cannot praise fascists and be pro-human rights’ by Dovid Katz.

David Williams, Rewriting History. Holocaust Revisionism Today, Hope Not Hate: London 2012.

Marc Ramdosky and Danny Ben-Moshe (producers of the documentary film) Rewriting History, Sydney 2012.


2013

Website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania (17 January 2013): ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — myths about saving Jews’ by Pinchos Fridberg. Also in the Algemeiner Journal (15 January 2013), the Operation Last Chance website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (19 December 2012), and Defending History (24 December 2012), where links are provided to the publications of the article in the Russian language.

Jerusalem Post (9 April 2013): ‘A threat too serious to ignore. Israel should take action on Holocaust-related issues as some “culprits” likely to take over EU presidency’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs (May 2013). ‘Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Intermarium: The Land between the Black and Baltic Seas’ reviewed by Dovid Katz.

DefendingHistory.com (27 May 2013): ‘State-sponsored collective memory revisionism; a 21st century incarnation of Holocaust Denial?’ by Dovid Katz [PDF of power point presentation at the Second International Conference on Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post-Communist Countries (in Riga, Latvia)].

Huffington Post (31 May 2013): ‘Truth wins’ by Edward Jacobs.

Section on the Prague Declaration (4 June 2013) in Clemens Heni’s paper at the World Jewish Congress Institute for Research and Policy.

DefendingHistory.com (15 November 2013): Clemens Heni’s works on the Prague Declaration.


 

2014

At the end of 2013, in an announcement disseminated mainly in January 2014, the World Union for Progressive Judaism announced it “fully endorses the Seventy Years Declaration. This Declaration, endorsed by 70 European Union parliamentarians who represent all sides of politics, is an attempt to distinguish between the horrors of the Shoah and other crimes against humanity. This has taken on a greater importance since the Prague Declaration of 2008 which attempts to equate the era of Nazism to that of Communist tyranny.”

In late March 2014, the Board of Deputies in London called on members of the European Parliament to work against the Prague Declaration and its ethos, in its A Jewish Manufesto, issued in the run-up to the European Parliament elections.

May 2014: Dan Stone’s new book, Goodbye to All That? A History of Europe Since 1945 (Oxford University Press) refers to the debate symbolized by the Prague Declaration vs. the Seventy Years Declaration.

Apastekhlatroymer: ‘Die Geschichte verteidigen – Defending History’ by Hans Breuer (post of 21 June 2014).

 

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Prague Declaration


Manifesto of the ‘Double Genocide’ and Holocaust Obfuscation movement

See also: Opposition to the Prague Declaration; Proposal for replacement; Statement on Soviet Crimes; The Seventy Years Declaration (+ Section).

The ‘Prague Declaration’ and its preceding and derivative European resolutions are based on ‘Double Genocide’: the proposed ‘equivalence’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes as revisionist history for the European Union. The theoretical constructs for the Double Genocide movement were developed by a number of historians in Eastern Europe, who have themselves on occasion been taken to task by courageous Lithuanian scholars who have exposed these works for what they are (see e.g. the classic review by V. Brandišauskas now available in English translation). Some of the bold dissenting voices from Lithuania are credited on this site’s Bold Citizens page.

The ‘Prague Declaration’ includes the following demands of the European Union:

‘recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy’

‘recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal’

‘ensuring the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination of victims of all the totalitarian regimes’

‘a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes’

‘adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes’

Chronological Outline of Developments (selection only)

Demands that the ‘Lithuanian suggestion to evaluate as equal crimes of Nazism and Stalinism’ be taken up by all EU countries (30 November 2007).

The precursor conference on ‘United Europe, United History’ in Tallinn (22 January 2008). 23 Jan. BNS report on the event, from the website of an Estonian MEP active in the movement (report now removed).

The ‘Prague Declaration’ (3 June 2008) at its own site [update of January 2012: declaration removed from this site which was reassigned to another Prague Declaration; see here for full original text; see here for a 2010 page capture of the original site); alternate link.

The ‘Prague Declaration’ on the website of the ‘International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania’; in Lithuanian.

Lithuanian ambassador to the United States formulates the red-equals-brown position in a letter to an American Jewish newspaper (11 July 2008).

Over four hundred MEPs sign a declaration supporting the Europe-wide establishment of August 23rd as a ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (23 Sept 2008).

President of Lithuania predicts that Europe will ‘equally’ condemn Nazi and Soviet crimes (24 Nov 2008).

The European Parliament resolution (2 April 2009) recommends a single mixed ‘Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality’ [item 15]. Alternate link.

Incumbent chairman of the European Parliament thanks the Baltic states for educating the West via the red-brown resolutions (28 April 2009).

Elements of the ‘Prague Declaration’ (ambiguous ‘double genocide language’) inserted into the OSCE’s ‘Vilnius Declaration’ of 3 July 2009 [see p. 48, points 3 and 10].

Elements of the ‘Prague Declaration’ presented to the European Parliament session of 14 October 2009 (BNS report of 13 October 2009).

Proposal in Brussels at a European Parliament conference by the director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic (14 October 2009). The speaker of the Lithuanian parliament insisted that Europe adopt ‘a single view on the crimes of totalitarian regimes’.

Lithuania’s major news portal Delfi.lt  attacks Israel’s president Shimon Peres for differentiating Nazi and Soviet crimes, providing this graphic (14 November 2009).

The spirit of the Prague Declaration is inserted into the ‘Stockholm Programme 2010-2014’ with a provision on ‘equality’ of totalitarian regimes (report of 8 Dec 2009).

Attempted academic justification for the Prague Declaration by Rokas Grajauskas in Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, 2010 (2): ‘Is there a chance for a common European culture of remembrance?’

After the EU’s Dec 2010 repudiation of attempts to insinuate Double Genocide in the Stockholm Programme, the Prague Declaration movement regroups in 2011 under the banner of: The Prague Process, announcing plans for 29 March 2011 meeting and funding under the ‘Europe for Citizens’ program, as well as plans to (abuse) the Hungarian and Polish presidencies of the EU for the red-equals-brown movement.

In 2012, the Lithuanian foreign ministry announces that pursuing in the EU the proposed unification of European history in a red=brown framework would be one of the formal goals of Lithuania’s 2013 rotating presidency of the EU.

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Prague’s Declaration of Disgrace. A European attempt to equate Communism with Nazism will falsify history.



O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Reprinted from the Jewish Chronicle (London), 21 May 2009


Not many have heard about the Prague Declaration, which is currently making the rounds at the European Parliament. Proclaimed last June in Prague (but cooked up in the Baltics), its innocuous theme is “European Conscience and Communism”. Now who would oppose that? The heinous crimes of Communist regimes clearly merit full exposure. Victims deserve recognition. When the grand jamboree of freedom, fun and prosperity got under way for us lucky westerners in 1945, entire nations ceded to Stalin were condemned to totalitarian rule.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), EU, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Prague’s Declaration of Disgrace. A European attempt to equate Communism with Nazism will falsify history.