Tag Archives: Red-Brown Commission

Yet Again, Naive Foreigners in Awe of Annual PR Show by ‘Red-Brown Commission’ (and its Director who Supports ‘War Crime Investigations’ of Holocaust Survivors)



OPINION  |  RED-BROWN COMMISSION  |  MR. RAČINSKAS ON THE HOLOCAUST  |  LITHUANIA  |  DOUBLE GENOCIDE

VILNIUS—With nearly all local Holocaust Survivors now gone, or effectively out of public circulation, Lithuania’s “Red-Brown Commission,” a major European engine for the downgrade of the Holocaust via far-right “Double Genocide” history revisionism  is again in the forefront of PR efforts to bowl over naive foreign visitors and delegations to this city, particularly on September 23rd each year, with “moving Holocaust elegies.” For Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, the very choice of Sept. 23 (day of the 1943 liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto by the Germans, two years after the murder of the majority of Lithuanian Jews in hundreds of towns across the land) was seen as a decoy. The day each of them had etched in the heart in perpetuity was June 23rd, when in 1941, violence against Jews broke out in hundreds of locations, with murder documented in around forty — before the first German forces arrived or managed to set up their authority. It was the day when six hundred years of peaceful, harmonious coexistence turned overnight, under Hitlerist propaganda, to dehumanization, humiliation, plunder, rape, injury and murder. To this day, an industrial grade revisionist industry continues to obfuscate or outright deny the history of the First Week (i.e. the last week of June 1941). Indeed, June 23rd is  celebrated by far-right government historians each year as the date of a supposed “uprising” against the Soviets  by the white-armbanded Jew killers who did not “rebel” until the Soviets fled in disarray from Hitler’s invasion, when they began to murder Jewish neighbors across the land unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust, in which 96.4% of Lithuanian Jewry perished. In 2020, Dr. Arunas Bubnys, the chief historian of the second “Holocaust entity financed by the state,” the Genocide Center, celebrated  the “holiday ” alongside banners of two major Holocaust collaborators. He was rewarded a year later with directorship of the Center.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Yet Again, Naive Foreigners in Awe of Annual PR Show by ‘Red-Brown Commission’ (and its Director who Supports ‘War Crime Investigations’ of Holocaust Survivors)

Dieckmann & Vanagaite Book Scores €10,000 from Lithuanian Gov. Fund On Top of $20,525 from Crowdfunding



VILNIUS—In November 2018, Defending History raised some questions about a crowdfunding campaign for a new book by Professor Christoph Dieckmann, a longtime member of the Lithuanian government’s “red-brown commission,” in partnership with bestselling author and Holocaust truth-teller Ruta Vanagaite. The article is reproduced below unchanged for speed of reference.

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Another One-Sided Yivo Program on the Lithuanian Holocaust — in New York City?


[Last updated 21 Dec. 2018]

OPINION  |  YIVO MANIPULATED?  |  WHAT IS THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION?  | A VILNIUS HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR’S PLEA TO YIVO  |  FROM THE EDITOR OF LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY’S NEWSPAPER

NEW YORK—Yet again, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, once the international bastion of living Yiddish high culture and genuine loyalty to East European Jewry, is putting on, in New York City, an event about the Holocaust in Lithuania that reflects only the Lithuanian government’s views on the subject. More precisely, a small number of well-funded government agencies in the business of “fixing the history of the Holocaust”: a “red-brown commission,” a Genocide Center, and Genocide Museum. The first of these, in a macabre tribute to George Orwell, is actually called “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania”. And indeed, it is one of its veteran members that is the instructor of the New York seminar, “The Shoah in Lithuania” to be held in five sessions from 3 to 17 January 2019. The fee is  $350, reduced to $275 for Yivo members.  For background see Dr. Yitzhak Arad’s paper on the red-brown commission’s actual purposes, DH’s page and section, a recent historic overview by DH’s editor in a Holocaust studies journal, and the resignation letters of  Prof. Konrad Kwiet and the late Sir Martin Gilbert.

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Prof. Lipstadt is Star at Lithuanian Government’s Latest One-Sided ‘Holocaust & Litvaks’ Conference on 29-30 May



VILNIUS—Various officials of the Lithuanian government’s Genocide Research Center, its Genocide Museum, and its “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania” (known for short as the “Red-Brown Commission”) are rather gleeful this week at the latest master PR coup for the long hard road to “soft core” Western legitimization of East European Holocaust revisionism. One of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars, and the activist who did more than any other to bring to an end the era of classical 20th Century Holocaust Denial, Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, has been attracted to headline a “one-sided Holocaust conference in a Baltic capital” where the naive foreign star’s eminence may help provide cover for ongoing policies. The  conference program has just been released in PDF format with, as usual, the star’s appearance artfully sandwiched between much else.

The “ham sandwich” model for political conferences made to look like pure, open, intellectually balanced academic conclaves?

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“Red-Brown Commission” Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Collaborator



Lithuanian Government’s “Red-Brown Commission,” A Prime Engine of Prague Declaration “Double Genocide” Politics, Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Holocaust Collaborator

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Lithuania, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yivo Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on “Red-Brown Commission” Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Collaborator

Baltic Red-Brown “Nazi-Soviet Hunter” Featured at Brazil’s Olympics in Rio



OPINION  |  RED-BROWN COMMISSION (PAGE)  |  RB COMMISSION (SECTION)  |  DOUBLE GENOCIDE  |  VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE

VILNIUS—The news portal Delfi.lt reported yesterday on Lithuanian sharpshooting star Ronaldas Račinskas making a hit at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics not only for his talents with a rifle, but on his work back home for which the headline calls him the “Nazi-Soviet hunter,” in the latest of a long series of Holocaust terms appropriated and ably recast by the Red-Brown movement’s PR wizzards. Besides heading a commission that now includes the gentleman who launched the campaign, a decade ago, to “hunt” Holocaust survivors who joined the Jewish partisans, his “Nazi and Soviet hunting” refers to his role as Director of the Secretariat of that comission, popularly known as the Red-Brown Commission, a state-financed entity that is one of the main European engines for spreading the revisionist far right’s “Double Genocide” model of World War II history. In that history, as an example, those who liberated Auschwitz are declared to be equal in principle to those who committed the genocide there. Moreover the movement’s primary document, the 2008 Prague Declaration (PD), insists that all European “minds” accept the revised history and regard Nazi and Soviet crimes as equal, a stance widely considered to be a camouflage for obfuscating and diminishing the Holocaust. The response in the European arena came in the form of the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration (SYD).

Director of the Secretariat of the state-sponsored International Commission on the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania (known for short as the “Red-Brown Commission”) is a sharpshooting star at the Rio Olympics. He has rapidly brought red-brown politics into the apolitical environment of the Olympic Games. His views on the Holocaust feature in a new German documentary.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide, Events, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Baltic Red-Brown “Nazi-Soviet Hunter” Featured at Brazil’s Olympics in Rio

Sugihara Abused? Red-Brown Commission Ropes In Japanese Embassy for 11 Feb. Event



OPINION  |  EVENTS  |  JAPAN  |  RED-BROWN COMMISSION  |  POLITICS OF MEMORY

VILNIUS—Over the past decade, few foreign embassies in Lithuania have done as much as Japan’s to help ensure that the Holocaust in Lithuania is never forgotten and indeed, that remembrance events and educational programs feed into both national and international efforts to raise awareness and sensitivities in the cause of averting future massacres of innocent civilians.

Japan’s Holocaust remembrance achievements in Lithuania are manifold. From 2008, when state prosecutors connected to the Genocide Center began defaming local Holocaust survivors, Japan’s embassy joined with others in giving honor to the wrongly accused, including the 2009 “Walk in the Rain” organized by then Norwegian ambassador Steinar Gil. More well known are the embassy’s activities in commemoration of Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, the inspirational Japanese humanist who saved thousands of lives by issuing visas in Kaunas in 1940 (enabling those people to flee Soviet rule directly, and indirectly from what was to come a year later, in 1941, with Hitler’s invasion and the massive local collaboration in genocide). One of the most important goes back to the turn of our century when the embassy participated actively, and generously, in setting up Sugihara House in Kaunas.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Japan, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Use and Abuse of Sugihara | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Sugihara Abused? Red-Brown Commission Ropes In Japanese Embassy for 11 Feb. Event

An Open Letter to Holocaust Scholars and Educators in the Francophone World



OPINION  |  FRANCE  |  RED-BROWN COMMISSION  |  GENOCIDE CENTER

Dear Colleagues:

Re: Conference on the Lithuanian Holocaust scheduled for this week in Vilnius

The newest Lithuanian “Double Genocide Industry” outreach to the French speaking academic world of Holocaust and World War II studies, this week’s conference in Vilnius, combines a number of truly outstanding scholars and papers with a political agenda of finding Francophone legitimization for Baltic Holocaust revisionism. The French component includes outstanding personalities from Mémorial de la Shoah, from Institut d’Histoire du Temps présent, and from the French Embassy in Lithuania. The strategy has recently evolved following a protracted collapse of US/UK/Israeli confidence in both the “Red-Brown Commission” (page)  and the “Genocide Center” (page), both of which have been extensively exposed in recent months. Participants from Lithuania include one of the Double Genocide movement’s main “attack dogs” who makes fine hay of smearing local Lithuanian truth tellers as stooges of Moscow or useful idiots, especially when attempting to discredit honest multi-sided conferences (e.g. last April’s Vilnius conference).

Will the European Commission and the Claims Conference ever see the light on how their generosity is abused by Baltic nationalist Holocaust revisionism?

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Double Genocide in Action? Victims and Perpetrators Interchangeable



O P I N I O N

VILNIUS—Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the Lithuanian-government financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania,” widely known for brevity as the “Red-Brown Commission,” has revealed — on camera, to the producers of the documentary film Liza Ruft — his thoughts about the “war crimes investigation” into Fania Brantsovsky. The video clip of his statement was released today on Youtube.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Games, Double Genocide, EU, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai) | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Double Genocide in Action? Victims and Perpetrators Interchangeable

A Library with an Agenda? Bringing American Naifs On Board the Ultranationalists’ Baltic Holocaust Distortion Train?



SUMMARY COVERAGE OF “VILNIUS JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY” EVENTS TO 19 JULY 2013:

Wyman Brent’s prophecy fulfilled?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", "Vilnius Jewish Public Library", Double Games, Double Genocide, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Library with an Agenda? Bringing American Naifs On Board the Ultranationalists’ Baltic Holocaust Distortion Train?

Vexed Revival of “Red-Brown Commission”



State-sponsored Zingeris-Račinskas “red-brown commission” (officially: International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania) in Vilnius posts new list of members.

See also: 

Page on the commission

Critiques of the commission and its associated Prague Declaration

DH section on the commission.

Resignations to date from Commission-related bodies include Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert (London), Prof. Gershon Greenberg (Washington DC), Prof. Konrad Kwiet  (Sydney) and Prof. Dov Levin (Jerusalem).

Holocaust survivors themselves have stood up to express disquiet about some aspects of the commission: Yitzhak AradPinchos Fridberg (more), Dov Levin (more), Joseph Melamed (more), Basheva Ran, the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Jewish Community of Lithuania / Union of Ghetto Survivorsdecade and a half of issues.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", "Vilnius Jewish Public Library", Double Games, Double Genocide, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Germany, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vexed Revival of “Red-Brown Commission”

Professor Fridberg’s Question about Mr. Zingeris to Dr. Alperovich, and Dr. Alperovich’s Reply…


Vilnius native and life-long resident Professor Pinchos Fridberg sent the following question to the leadership of the Jewish Community of Lithuania (JCL), and received the following answer. These official English translations, accepted by JCL, are reprinted verbatim, with permission from the website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, where the question appears here and the reply here.

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US Researcher is Persuaded that the Problem in Lithuania is called “Zuroff and Katz”



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

The blog Christine Beresniova and Rokas Beresniovas recently published the article “A lamentable absence of sexy scandals.” We will refrain from comment on their understanding of the concept “sexy scandals” and stick to the work of fellow human rights advocates, which entails standing up to powerful establishments on behalf of minorities, victims of prejudice, and in the case of Eastern Europe, the victims (and handful of survivors) of genocide. Those who stand up know all too well that to do so is not all that often convenient, easygoing or self-serving.

Beresniovas and Beresniova Website Banner (2013)

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Outgoing Lithuanian PM, Red-Brown Commission and Genocide Center Joining Forces for Mid-November Vilnius Conference Promoting “Double Genocide”


With the recent Lithuanian elections barely out of the way, and the ruling right-wing Homeland Union Conservatives the undisputed losers, the ultranationalist right is losing no time in pressing ahead aggressively with the Double Genocide “red-equals-brown” agenda, reverting to one of the movement’s original slogans: “United Europe — United History.” For pro-tolerance and liberal forces, the profoundly undemocratic message implied is that a united Europe has to also be united (i.e. have one opinion) on questions of history, and that Double Genocide and its central document, the 2008 Prague Declaration, are inviolable truths.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Outgoing Lithuanian PM, Red-Brown Commission and Genocide Center Joining Forces for Mid-November Vilnius Conference Promoting “Double Genocide”

Yad Vashem Shocks Holocaust Survivors by Rejoining Lithuanian Government’s “Red-Brown Commission”


Holocaust survivors from Lithuania, and their families and advocates, are reporting feelings of “shock and betrayal” at “unbelievable reports” that Yad Vashem might again be lending legitimacy to the Lithuanian government sponsored “red-brown commission.” These accounts derive from a BNS (Baltic News Service) report today that appeared in various Lithuanian media, including Alfa.lt (full translation below), reporting that the president herself signed the decree today for substantial new state investment in the commission.

The Vilnius and Jerusalem rumor mills are equally putting out the word that there had been pressure from the Israeli foreign ministry, itself pressured by the Lithuanian foreign ministry for Holocaust-revising gestures in line with the current Baltic state policy often referred to as “Double Genocide.”

UPDATES: 29 Aug 201231 Aug31 Aug(b)31 Aug(c); 3 Sept; 3 Sept(b) [Holocaust survivors’ statement]; 3 Sept(c) [Survivors’ letter to head of Yad Vashem]; 3 Sept(d) [in English translation].

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Executive Director of “Red-Brown Commission” Doubts Lithuanian Jews were Killed “on a Racial Basis” Before Arrival of German Forces in 1941



O P I N I O N

A number of viewers of the new Australian documentary film Rewriting History, by Marc Radomsky and Danny Ben-Moshe, have submitted to Defending History near-identical transcripts of a statement on camera, made to the film’s producers, by the 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,” the state-sponsored body has long been opposed by Holocaust survivors and educators. The commission is responsible for Holocaust education in Lithuania, but has also taken an active political role in promoting the 2008 Prague Declaration and various details of alleged “equality” of Nazi and Soviet crimes. The commission’s website features the Prague Declaration in both English and Lithuanian.

The commission’s executive director, Ronaldas Račinskas, is quoted as saying on camera that his commission does not support “Double Genocide” but that he does support the 2008 Prague Declaration (though he concedes there are passages to be “discussed”). The problem is that the Prague Declaration is the primary document of the Double Genocide movement in Europe.

See also: Mr. Račinskas’s 2011 speech in the Lithuanian parliament; Critiques of his commission; 2015 Update: His call for investigations of Holocaust survivors who joined up with the anti-Nazi partisans.

Mr. Račinskas goes on to say, according to the transcripts provided of his Rewriting History interview:

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Arts, Australia, Double Games, Double Genocide, EU, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), History, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Executive Director of “Red-Brown Commission” Doubts Lithuanian Jews were Killed “on a Racial Basis” Before Arrival of German Forces in 1941

How the Zingeris-Račinskas Red-Brown Commission “Gently” Pushed Along the Conversion of Holocaust Studies into Double Genocide Studies



O P I N I O N

by Rachel Croucher (Melbourne)

Although not seeking to deny the Holocaust, the ultimate consequence of the movement to redefine genocide is the equalization of National Socialist and Soviet crimes. The characterization of Soviet crimes as genocide is a misrepresentation that hinders authentic remembrance of the Holocaust in Lithuania by helping to obscure the extent and nature of Lithuanian complicity in the killings of the local Jewish population.

The idea that the crimes of Hitler and successive Soviet regimes are in fact equal has been a growing force behind public discourse on the Holocaust since the formulation of the national Holocaust and Genocide Education Program at the sixth meeting of The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania in June 2002.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Australia, Double Genocide, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rachel Croucher | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the Zingeris-Račinskas Red-Brown Commission “Gently” Pushed Along the Conversion of Holocaust Studies into Double Genocide Studies

A Conference for Tolerance Day


 


O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

On Wednesday, November 16th 2011, the Tolerance Center in Vilnius hosted a conference called: Tolerance and Totalitarianism. Challenges to Freedom.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Events, Geoff Vasil, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Conference for Tolerance Day

Račinskas’s Version of ‘Holocaust Education’: Red-Brown Commission Director General Speaks in the Lithuanian Parliament


Updates (newest first):

His views finally came through in English in a German documentary film

Mr. Racinskas calls prominent Holocaust survivor a liar on the commission’s website

He tries to deny LAF murders “on racial basis” before arrival of German forces in 1941

Says European Commission “spits in the face” when it fails to accept a Double Genocide resolution from the Baltics

The following is DefendingHistory.com’s translation (from the tape) of the concluding speech of the 29-30 June 2011 conference (reports here and here), delivered by Ronaldas Račinskas, director general (sometimes listed as executive director) of the government sponsored ‘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’), which is housed in the Office of the Prime Minister of Lithuania. It can serve as a potent example of the state-sponsored Holocaust Obfuscation movement which presents one face domestically, a second in the European Parliament, and a third to naive Western Holocaust Studies groups.

Simple, really. Tell the locals there was no Holocaust, just a complicated morass of  mixed-up perpetrators and victims (and heck, those Jews were mostly communists anyway). Tell the European Parliament there were two equal genocides and they must legislate the equality of totalitarian regimes. And tell the foreign Jews and the West you need money to pursue Holocaust studies and commemoration. They’ll have to believe you. After all, you’re in the prime minister’s office of an EU government. Elementary, really?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, News & Views, Plungyán (Plungė), US State Dept Manipulated?, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Račinskas’s Version of ‘Holocaust Education’: Red-Brown Commission Director General Speaks in the Lithuanian Parliament

Critiques of the Red-Brown Commission



1998    2001-2007    2008-2011    2012-2013    2014-2015    2016   2017-2018    2019   2022


◊ 
SEE ALSO:

DH editor’s take

Video: Commission’s director about Fania Btantsovsky and other Jewish partisan heroes defamed by antisemitic prosecutors

Page on the Commission

Section on the Commission

Commission’s Own Website

2015 Appeal to conscience of members of the Commission

2015 Appeal by one of the last Vilnius Holocaust survivors


Holocaust Survivors expressed grave concerns about the Commission at its inception in 1998. As PDF. See also 1998 letter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.


From Karen Sutton’s The Massacre of the Jews of Lithuania. Lithuanian Collaboration in the Final Solution, 1941 – 1944 (published by Gefen, Jerusalem & NY 2008; excerpt from p. 211):

Sutton revised


From David Bankier’s  Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania (published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2012; excerpt from page 204):

Bankier on red-brown commission


From Yitzhak Arad’s “The Holocaust in Lithuania, and its Obfuscation, in Lithuanian Sources” (2012):

Arad on Commission


 

2001-2007

Efraim Zuroff (Vilnius 2001)

Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem 2005)

Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem 2007)


2008-2013

Sir Martin Gilbert resigned in 2008:


Jewish Community of Lithuania and Uni0n of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners (Vilnius 2008). Letter contains the text:

‘The fact that the “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” established by the President (chaired by E. Zingeris), did not publicly defend its own member Yitzhak Arad, or the other Jewish anti-Nazi partisans, is also surprising.’

Jewish Community of Lithuania and Uni0n of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners (Vilnius 2008)

Karen Sutton, professor of history at Touro College in New York, in her The Massacre of the Jews of Lithuania (see Recent Books → 2008; Background →  2008):

‘Despite a number of half-hearted measures and ill-conceived historical commissions, contemporary Lithuania has much soul-searching to do to come to terms with what happened [….]’ (p 209); ‘Both the historical commission and the lethargy of the Lithuanian Department of Justice on the issue of alleged war criminals have elicited an enormous outpouring of opposition from the Lithuanian Jewish survivor community and — “symmetrically” — tacit approval of the general non-Jewish population’ (p 211).

Yad Vashem (Jerusalem 2008)

Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas) (Vilnius 2008)

Valdas Vasiliauskas (Vilnius 2008);  English translation


Professor Dov Levin demanded removal of his name in 2008:


Avi Friedman (Jerusalem 2009)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2009a)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2009b)

Shimon Samuels (Paris 2009, presented at Warsaw); alternate link

Jonathan Freedland (London 2009)

Clemens Heni (Berlin 2009)PDF

Esther Goldberg (London 2010)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010);  in Russian translation

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010b)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010c)

Bildungswerk für Friedensarbeit e.V. (2011)

2011: Commission’s understanding of “Holocaust Studies”  revealed at the Lithuanian parliament in the speech of its executive director / director general.

Professor Konrad Kwiet resigned in 2011:


2012-2014

28 August 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Yad Vashem shocks Holocaust survivors by rejoining Lithuanian government’s “red-brown commission”’.

31 August 2012.  Lietuvos rytas: ‘Taking an interest in Nazi and Soviet crimes is a response to Russian propaganda’.  English translation.  DefendingHistory.com comments.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘English text of Joseph Melamed’s letter to Yad Vashem’.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Joseph Melamed, head of Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors’ association, releases letter to director of Yad Vashem’.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Holocaust survivors, based in Tel aviv, issue statement on renewal of red-brown commission’.

21 November 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘When the politicians run the conferences on — history’ by Evaldas Balčiūnas.

21 November 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Red-Brown circus in Lithuanian capital’.

26 December 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Tell me I’m wrong’ by Geoff Vasil.

1 January 2013.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — myths about saving Jews’  by Pinchos Fridberg.

15 January 2013.   The Algemeiner: ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — Myths about saving Jews’ by Pinchos Fridberg.

17 January 2013.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Red-brown commission’s newest layer of obfuscation: Are names of members secret?

27 January 2013US Researcher is Persuaded that the Problem in Lithuania is called “Zuroff and Katz” …

21 February 2013.  Executive director of the red-brown commission calls prominent Vilnius Holocaust survivor a ‘liar’ on the commission’s website.

28 May 2013.  Executive director of the commission uses paper at Riga conference to personally attack Defending History editor.

21 June 2013.  One of the commission’s new members, the head of the research department art the Genocide Center, tries yet again, in a public interview, to whitewash th LAF murderers of June 1041. Geoff Vasil replies.

5 December 2013.  Commission ‘does’ Toronto.

 


2014-2015

2 March 2014.  Defending History’s English translation of the public correspondence between Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg and Yivo director Dr. Jonathan Brent concerning the commission. Original appeared on 1 March in Yiddish in New York’s Forward (Forverts).

8 March 2014.  Olga Zabludoff comments on the misrepresentations by the commission’s representative on a panel discussion organized by Yivo in New York City in February 2014.

15 March 2014.  Defending History’s appeal to the conscience of the members of the commission.


2016

18 November 2016.  Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust (University of Haifa, Institute for Holocaust Research), vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 1–30: ‘Is East European “Double Genocide” revisionism reaching museums?’ by Dovid Katz.

22 November 2016.  ISGAP Flashpoint: ‘Antisemitism in the twenty-first century shtetl’ by Dovid Katz.


2017

December 2017. Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust (University of Haifa, Institute for Holocaust Research), vol. 31.3, pp. 285-295: “The Extraordinary Recent History of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania” by Dovid Katz.


2019

August 2019. Lithuania’s official Jewish Community reports that the executive director of the “red-brown commission” is under police investigation for corruption.


2022

April 2022. Red-Brown Commission seems to abandon any distancing from the far-right state-sponsored Genocide Center, whose director has long been a regular participant in far-right antisemitic events that often glorify local Holocaust collaborators as supposed heroes. See Evaldas Balčiūnas’s review of  a book by Genocide Center director A.Bubnys, published in Lithuanian only by the Commission, and its implications for the wider debate.

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