Author Archives: Defending History
Red-Brown “Platform” Runs Another Double Genocide Conference — in Warsaw…
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Events, History, Museums, Poland, Prague "Platform"
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British Updates
British Foreign Office on Latvia’s National Waffen SS Fest:
UK’S MINISTER FOR EUROPE ENTERS THE FRAY
MONICA LOWENBERG IN THE LONDON JEWISH NEWS
ANNA SHEINMAN IN THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
Tagged David Lidington, Michal Kaminski, Waffen SS (Latvia)
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Baltic Times: Hitting a New Low with “Paid Advertisement” Advocating Migration of Latvia’s Russian Speakers?
O P I N I O N / M E D I A W A T C H
The half-page article on the “Business” page of the Baltic Times (dated 4-17 April 2013 but widely available this week here in Vilnius) carries at its end the words “This is a paid advertisement.”
But these words do not succeed in mitigating the moral responsibility of the increasingly ultranationalist, far-right newspaper in disseminating hate material against any minority, least of all of in an EU / NATO member state. The inherent equality of peoples and their races and languages and national and personal identities are an inseparable component of what the European Union and NATO are all about.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Latvia, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Racism, Russian Speakers' Personal Status
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The Neo-Nazis Hate the Feminists, Too
Protesters against ultranationalist groups must face police and prosecutors
O P I N I O N
by Lina Žigelytė
Lina Žigelytė
A spectre is haunting Lithuania — the spectre of feminism. All the powers of far-right Lithuania (this includes also far-rightists who know how to present themselves as center-right) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: puritans and watchful police officers, bloggers and self-described patriots.
The word “feminist” has become the most recent label to define the enemy of the state. This is because grassroots strategies — theatrical protests, DIY media, art projects, and solidarity with social minorities — are rapidly changing the landscape of local feminism. What is important, these strategies also invigorate the broader fight against neo-Nazism.
Posted in EU, Film, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lina Žigelytė, News & Views, Opinion, Symbology, Women's Rights
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Lithuanian Government’s 2013 Vilna Ghetto PR Jamboree
Vilna Ghetto is Back in Focus
But Will “Vilna Ghetto Fest” Include Public Apologies to Defamed Vilna (and Kovno) Ghetto Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Heroes? Invitations to Come Join the Party?
UPDATES:
1. The Secret “Big-Bucks Vilna Ghetto Disneyland Theme Park” Project (minus the Jewish community, minus apologies to the Partisans of Vilna, minus removals of memorials to local Holocaust perpetrators).
2. Renewed International Petition.
3. Ghetto survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance have been criminalized.
4. Government delegation in South Africa trying to pry Disneyland “investment” from unsuspecting South African Jews.
SEVEN SIMPLE SOLUTIONS
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, South Africa
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Vilnius Jewish Community Honors Veterans of the War Against Hitler
Jewish Community of Lithuania Honors Veterans of the War Against Hitler
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Jewish children lead each of the surviving Jewish veterans of World War II to the rapturous welcome of a huge crowd at the Jewish Community of Lithuania’s headquarters in central Vilnius.
Posted in News & Views
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Estonian Fascist Admirers Preparing Midsummer Waffen SS Fest
O P I N I O N
by Leena Hietanen
Estonian ultranationalists traditionally celebrate Hitler’s victory on the Sinimae Hillls in eastern Estonia annually at the end of July. This year is no exception. The festivities are slated to start on the 27th of July at Sinimae.
As usual, the Estonian government is quietly giving its blessing to the proceedings. Old Estonian Waffen SS Legionaries gather on the hills to commemorate their participation on the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany. In the battles of Sinimae Hills during the spring and summer of 1944 Estonian Waffen SS soldiers together with their fellow pro-Nazi combatants from Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland and Germany halted the progress of the Allied/Soviet front for half a year in the Eastern part of Estonia postponing the collapse of Nazi-Germany and condemning untold civilians to ongoing Nazi atrocities. Almost half of a million Hungarian Jews lost their lives in Auschwitz thanks to Estonian Legionaries. They would have survived had the Soviet advance not been tied up the Germans’ prime allies among the Estonian fascists.Continue reading
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Estonia, Human Rights, Leena Hietanen, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Lithuanian Anti-Fascist Group Mounts Protest in Kaunas Against Glorification of 1941 LAF Killers on Anniversary of the Day the Killing Started
Courageous Antifa Lietuva banner reads: “Real heroes rescued people instead of killing them. Remember the victims of the Holocaust”
Milan Chersonski was there. His report on the event. His take: “Let the world know that not everyone in Lithuania tolerates the distortion of history.”
Milan Chersonski (second from right) is not the only one in town taking pictures of the banner and the handful of demonstrators. Police photographed anti-fascist participants and asked names and addresses (as last February).
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The group of courageous demonstrators at the Lietukis Garage memorial, in a city-center courtyard in Kaunas
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Milan Chersonski walks with the small group of Antifa Lietuva demonstrators who marched the same route though Kaunas old town that throngs of neo-Nazis take each year on February 16th. This year the neo-Nazis’ banner had honored the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister on whose watch the Lithuanian Holocaust began.
MORE IMAGES HERE
Antifa Lietuva’s report on the event; on Facebook
MEANWHILE, GENOCIDE CENTER’S MEMBER OF GOV’S RENEWED “RED-BROWN COMMISSION” WAS BUSY SANITIZING THE LAF (AND DISMISSING THE HISTORIC EVIDENCE OF “ISRAELI” SCHOLARS) IN NATIONAL MEDIA. Some of the sources.
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Could there really be a “June 23rd Street” in Vilnius?
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Background: Evaldas Balčiūnas; Milan Chersonski; Section on collaborators glorified. Honors for collaborators in public spaces. Reburial of 2012. Historical readings. More on June 1941.
INTERNATIONAL PETITION
Milan Chersonski (Vilnius):
Rehabilitation of the Past as a Tool in Modern Politics
Street name in Kaunas for the head of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (in Berlin) whose hateful radio addresses incited mobs to mass murder.
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The lecture hall at Vytautas Magnus University named for the actual Nazi puppet prime minister Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) who signed papers confirming German orders for sending the Jews of his city (KAUNAS) to a concentration camp, and for incarcerating all the rest in the ghetto. The 2012 reburial saga.
Leena Hietanen (Tallinn) on the bestseller novel Purge:
Double Genocide: A Literary Jackpot?
Background: Sections on Double Genocide and Collaborators Glorified; Yitzhak Arad’s paper on the academic evolution of the revisionist paradigm; Efraim Zuroff’s “The Equivalency Canard”; articles by Danny Ben-Moshe and Dovid Katz.
SEE ALSO: Books
Litvak Holocaust Survivors: Betrayed Again?
State-sponsored “red-brown commission” in Vilnius posts new list of members
Commission has caused concern among survivors themselves: Yitzhak Arad, Pinchos Fridberg, Dov Levin, Joseph Melamed, Basheva Ran. A decade and a half of issues.
Still no apology to commission’s former (& founding) member Yitzhak Arad after massive state-sponsored defamation
In 2013, Commission defames Vilnius survivor Pinchos Fridberg on its website, and uses conference in Riga to attack Defending History. Commission member from the Genocide Center uses 23 June 2013 in newest attempt to whitewash 1941 LAF collaborators and perpetrators, in defiance of the history. Accidental omission? His entry on Commission members’ list (with no hint of “completely separate subcommissions”) omits the “detail” that he is director of the “Genocide and Resistance Research Department” at the Genocide Center…
MORE HERE
Screening tour of Rewriting History in the UK (London July 10th 2013), presented by Danny Ben-Moshe. RELATED: US tour.
Documentary films by Richard Bloom (USA) and Christian Carlsen (Germany), both scheduled for release on 23 Sept 2013. SEE ALSO: Film listings and Film & Theatre section.
The Clock is Ticking…
A Time for Loyalty to Litvak (and All) Holocaust Survivors
TO EVERY THING THERE IS A TIME UNDER THE SUN…
A Need for De-Obfuscation?
Newest Word for Holocaust Revisionism in Eurospeak? “ISTME” (pronounced Is-it-me?) comes under “Science and Technology”!
Is the EU Again Being Bamboozled with “Double Genocide”? Are fine scholars again unwittingly instrumentalized for DG?
More red-equals-brown movement dissemination, now via “Science and Technology”? Orwellian concoctions to downgrade the Holocaust and stifle debate include: “Reconciliation of European Histories”, “Platform of European Memory”, “principle of non-discrimination of victimhood” and now, under “European cooperation in science and technology” (!) a brand new “Euro-classic”: In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME)…
Will it be a fair and balanced conference in Cracow on 16-18 Sept. 2013? Will there be critical papers on the Prague Declaration (and SYD), Double Genocide? state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators (in Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine)? arbitrary redefinition of genocide? attempts to incriminate survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance? “red-brown” laws restricting free speech in Hungary and Lithuania?
RELATED: Was Montero instrumentalized in 2011? When the EU “just said No” (2010) [background]; EU section.
Shrines for Nazis, in the EU
International Petition Tops 750 Mark; Progress Seen, as Organizers of Kaunas “Religious Heritage” Conference Reported to Seek Alternative Venue; Vytautas Magnus University Continues to Honor City’s 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Presided over Initiation of the Lithuanian Holocaust
He was honored by the central government too in a fiasco including Kaunas’s university. Its leading historian told the press that reburying the fascist underlines “the drama of Lithuanian history” and lamented that administrators were “afraid of getting hit over the head by the Jews with a club.” The city’s Jewish population, once over 30,000, is now several hundred, close to statistical zero.
Defending History urges people of conscience politely to refrain from entering the building until the shrines are removed.
What was going on in Kaunas (Kovno) during the tenure of the June-August 1941 “Provisional Government”? Here, white-armbanders loyal to the gov take women citizens to humiliation and death because they are Jewish…
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Related: Evaldas Balčiūnas on a military academy named for someone with Nazi-era biographical gaps…..
28-30 May 2013
Fireworks in Jerusalem
Times of Israel coverage by Raphael Ahren. Comment by: Abraham Foxman, Clemens Heni, Robert Wistrich, Efraim Zuroff. More debate.
27-28 May 2013
Fireworks in Riga
On the Watch, In Real Time
DEFENDING HISTORY MONITORS THE EAST EUROPEAN EXPORT OF REVISIONIST HOLOCAUST HISTORY, ATTEMPTS AT GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL COLLABORATORS, AND THE ACCOMPANYING RACISM, ANTISEMITISM AND HOMOPHOBIA
CHECKING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE:
Australia, Canada, EU, Israel, South Africa, UK, USA
DEFENDING HISTORY SUPPORTS HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, RESISTANCE HEROES AGAINST NAZISM, EAST EUROPEAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES, YIDDISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE; WITH EMPHASIS ON THE LITVAK CULTURE, LEGACY, HISTORY AND FUTURE
MISSION MEDIA NEWS LITVAK CULTURE & TOURISM
Rewriting History ◊ More documentaries ◊ SYD ◊ Donate ◊ Facebook ◊ Neo-Nazis target DefendingHistory.com ◊ But many courageous citizens stand up with courage
22 May 2013
Admirers, in Vilnius, say ‘Happy Birthday’ on Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky’s 91st
Veteran of the Vilna Jewish partisans, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky answers questions from an international audience that came to celebrate her 91st birthday (at the Jewish Community of Lithuania, in the room dedicated to veterans of the Jewish resistance against the Nazis). She was one of the victims, in recent years, of local prosecutors’ kangaroo “war crimes investigations” against Lithuanian Jews who survived the Holocaust precisely because they joined the anti-Nazi resistance.
Brantsovsky set the tone for public resistance early on, in May 2008, in a Jerusalem Post interview, concurrent with the Wiesenthal Center’s letter to the then Lithuanian ambassador in Israel, and followed by the Jewish community’s own protest. The campaign of defamation has extended to some of the last Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, including Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Prof. Sara Ginaite, Dr. Rachel Margolis, and attorney Joseph Melamed, head of the world’s last active associations of Litvak survivors. There has been massive international reaction including the Australian made documentary film Rewriting History, and the American Defending Holocaust History (scheduled for 23 Sept 2013 release).
HELP SAVE THE FOREST FORT WHERE FANIA YOCHELES AND ANOTHER 100 JEWISH SURVIVORS OF THE VILNA GHETTO FOUGHT THE NAZIS
There is still time for Lithuania’s government to end the six hundred year pre-Holocaust sharing of space in the spirit of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the happier note of reconciliation via public apologies to the defamed Jewish partisans (who continue to be defamed in new publications, e.g. “Intermarium” and on Wikipedia etc).
14-15 May 2013
Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw, Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”
Not one presentation on EU states’ glorification of local Holocaust perpetrators (including street names and reburials of Nazi collaborators; commemorations in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania); criminalization of debate; Holocaust Obfuscation; Double Genocide; distortionist “genocide museums” and “genocide centers”; state accusations against survivors; failure to seriously prosecute Nazi war criminals and the need for study of underlying narrative-revising motives; red-brown commission’s campaign against a courageous Holocaust survivor in 2013; issues with the Prague Declaration; the Seventy Years Declaration.
Survivor circles express quiet regret that DC’s Holocaust Museum (USHMM) unwittingly supports revisionist agenda by legitimizing, via simple participation, another Double Genocide event in Europe. At earlier events, USHMM was one of an array of “useful Western legitimizers” but this time around it is the only one.
9 May 2013
Jewish Community of Lithuania Honors Veterans of the War Against Hitler
Jewish children lead each of the surviving Jewish veterans of World War II to the rapturous welcome of a huge crowd at the Jewish Community of Lithuania’s headquarters in central Vilnius.
The Homophobic Track Record of MEP Vytautas Landsbergis
O P I N I O N
by Anna Shepherd
Lithuanian conservative politician, former Head of the Lithuanian Parliament and current EPP Member of the European Parliament Vytautas Landsbergis has consistently expressed homophobic views and spoken out against initiatives to strengthen LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights in the European community, and particularly in Lithuania itself.
SEE ALSO:
LANDSBERGIS’S TRACK RECORD ON JEWISH ISSUES
ON THE GLORIFICATION OF LOCAL NAZI COLLABORATORS
Landsbergis expressed his views about LGBT rights unambiguously in his outlandish claim in 2010 that paedophilia is connected to homosexuality. This claim was made at a parliamentary hearing on the sexual abuse on children organised in the European Parliament. According to Landsbergis, children should be protected from “homosexual propaganda” and “homophilic [sic] paedophilia”. Landsbergis’ claims were condemned by Cecilia Malmström, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs; and the European Parliament’s Intergroup for LGBT Rights, which stated that it condemns paedophilia unreservedly, as do all recognized LGBT organizations worldwide.
Posted in Anna Shepherd, EU, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged LGBT Rights, Vytautas Landsbergis & Gay Rights
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Zeppelinus Images Revealed as Media Claims he is a Government Official
Three Major Lithuanian Sites Claim that Neo-Nazi Internet Figure “Zeppelinus,” a Hater of Poles, Jews, Roma, Russians, Blacks and Gays is actually…
Director of the Economic Ministry’s Human Resources Dept and the Government’s Rep on the “Tripartite Council”
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Samples of Zeppelinus’s hate images on the internet:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, EU, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Media Watch, News & Views, Racism, Russian Speakers' Personal Status
Tagged Antisemitism in Lithuania, Zeppelinus
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On the Preservation of Lithuania’s Old Jewish Cemeteries
O P I N I O N
by Joseph Levinson
Joseph Levinson (Josifas Levinsonas) in Vilnius, 2013. Courtesy of the Levinson family.
On April 25th 2013 an event dedicated to the recording, maintenance and preservation of old Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania was held at the Vilnius premises of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. It was organized by the NGO “Maceva” and chaired by one of the NGO’s founders and leading figures, himself a resident of Brussels.
The April 25th evening in Vilnius went “smoothly” until a veteran member of the Jewish Community politely pointed out that much of the work that the NGO was taking credit for and presented as a miracle dropped from the heavens had in fact been carried out many years earlier by the very Jewish Community in whose premises the event was held. There was a moment of shock when the event’s chairman reacted by saying “There are different kinds of Jews!” instead of thanking the senior member of our community for his well-intentioned, polite and factual corrective remarks from the floor.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Joseph Levinson, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Joseph Levinson, Maceva
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Swastikas From Latvia in Center of Šiauliai (Shavl), Lithuania, as Police Look On
Since 2010, when a Lithuanian court proclaimed public swastikas legal and included in its ruling the “historical wisdom” that it only a harmless ancient Baltic symbol, swastikas have proliferated at public events sponsored by the far right, with police looking on listlessly. Most painfully for the dwindling numbers of Holocaust survivors here and abroad, swastikas and other fascist symbols, along with glorification of local Holocaust collaborators, have figured in sanctioned independence day marches in Kaunas on February 16th each year, and in the capital city Vilnius, each March 11th.
In 2012, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee commented publicly.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Events, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Latvia, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania, Symbology
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Exposé in Lithuania
Posted in Boxes
Tagged Augustinas Voldemaras, Holocaust in Latvia, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish Partisans Vilna and Kovno, Jewish Vilnius, Lawin Law Firm, Lithuanian Activist Front, Litvak Congress 2013, Monica Lowenberg, Vilna Ghetto, Vilnius Ghetto
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Wikipedia Entry for Seventy Years Declaration Rapidly Sabotaged
The recently entered Wikipedia entry on the Seventy Years Declaration has been rapidly distorted by the usual right-wing Baltic nationalism operatives who use the free on-line encyclopedia to foster the misimpression that Prague Declaration politics are “neutral” while its opponents who oppose glorification of Nazism in Eastern Europe are “left wing.” Moreover numerous inaccuracies and impertinent points have been introduced in an obvious attempt to render the entry untenable and have it removed, while the far-right’s Prague Declaration politics continue to be propagated on Wikipedia with the energy of a full-time PR team.
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Reports from Lithuanian Media Claim that Neo-Nazi “Zeppelinus” is Unmasked as — A Government Official!
Lrytas.lt today published an article by Martynas Čerkauskas, “Lithuanian Economics Ministry Accused of Nationalism” which follows this week’s exposés in Antifa.lt, Baltas.lt, and Kauno Žinios, which all imply or claim that the neo-Nazi internet “hero” who calls himself “Zeppelinus” is actually director of the Economic Ministry’s Expansion of Human Resources Department and a member of the Tripartite Council (labor, business and government), where he is the chief representative of the government’s interests.
UPDATE OF 15 JUNE 2013: See our Open Letter to the new economy minister with appendix of “Zeppelinus” images including English translations of text.
A sampling of images attributed to “Zeppelinus” is provided here.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, EU, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Racism
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Reviews and Coverage of the Australian Documentary Film “Rewriting History”
[date of last update]
www.Rewriting-History.org
FACEBOOK PAGE
US SCREENING TOUR 2013
The film features exclusive commentary by historians Efraim Zuroff and Konrad Kwiet; Survivors Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dobke Yonis; Vilnius activists: former Green House Holocaust museum director Rachel Kostanian and former Vilnius University Yiddish professor Dovid Katz; European parliamentarians Denis MacShane, John Mann, Martin Schulz, Gert Weisskirchen; Sensational responses from Lithuanian government officials including red-brown commission boss Ronaldas Račinskas and the prosecutor, Rimvydas Valentukevičius, who “investigates” Holocaust survivors (none of whom were ever charged with anything or received a public apology); MEP Vytautas Landsbergis later withheld permission for inclusion of his own taped interview…
Posted in Arts, Australia, Danny Ben-Moshe, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Rachel Kostanian
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Facebook Discussion of 23-29 April 2013 on the May 2013 Global Forum in Jerusalem
A paste-in of the Facebook discussion to date on the upcoming Global Forum conferences in Jerusalem is available at:
https://defendinghistory.com/facebook-discussion-on-2013-global-forum-23-29-april-2013.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Efraim Zuroff, Israel, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Opinion
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