Author Archives: Defending History

Red-Brown Circus in Lithuanian Capital



Outgoing prime minister, after right wing’s loss in Lithuania’s elections, headlines “Double Genocide” conference in nation’s parliamentRed-Brown Commission is primary organizer of the eventGirniusLandsbergisLiekisRačinskasZingeris are featured; Partners include the “Genocide Center” that Glorifies Local Holocaust Perpetrators

UPDATES TO 21 FEBRUARY 2013:

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR PINCHOS FRIDBERG SPEAKS OUT — ON THE LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY’S WEBSITE; IN THE ALGEMEINER; SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER’S OPERATION LAST CHANCE; AND DEFENDING HISTORY.

EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS

GEOFF VASIL (VASILIAUSKAS)

OUR PRE-CONFERENCE REPORT

Dovid Katz replies to the Red-Brown Commission website’s attack against Professor Pinchos Fridberg

 

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", Symbology, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off on Red-Brown Circus in Lithuanian Capital

When the Politicians Run the Conferences on — History



O P I N I O N   A N D   E Y E W I T N E S S    R E P O R T

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

 

A conference called “United Europe, United History” took place at the Lithuanian parliament on November 15th  and 16th. The conference organizers and speakers repeatedly spoke of upcoming changes in the government (16 November was the first day the newly elected parliament assembled), and conference organizer and “Red-Brown Commission” chairman Emanuelis Zingeris even tried, unsuccessfully, to explain the poll results as the bad influence of the long Soviet occupation on the mentality of the people… (It was probably a good thing he didn’t call for a an international tribunal to provide compensation for the losses suffered by his party).

But one thing at a time.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Events, History, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off on When the Politicians Run the Conferences on — History

On a Selection of Powerful East European Holocaust Photographs



O P I N I O N

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

 

The Holocaust in Europe has brought forth a certain number of photographs of victims of Nazism. But we have to acknowledge that there is a large disproportion between those that came to be known from Western Europe and those which went down in history that were taken in the East European countries where the bullet reigned as supreme death master.

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Posted in History, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet | Comments Off on On a Selection of Powerful East European Holocaust Photographs

Dark Tourism: Memorials to Holocaust Perpetrators


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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Dark Tourism: Memorials to Holocaust Perpetrators

The Genocide Center


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Posted in Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, News & Views, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off on The Genocide Center

Lithuania’s Last Jewish Fort


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Posted in Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Lithuania’s Last Jewish Fort

Kristallnacht Becomes PR Hook for Double Genociders at Berlin Events of the “Prague Process Platform”


The Platform of European Memory and Conscience is the name of one of the main European engines of Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation. Apparently funded by the European Union in part (or more), its name is inspired by the full name of the 2008 “Prague Declaration” (on European Conscience and Communism), which is prominently advertised on its home page. Informally it is referred to as the “Prague Process Platform” (PPP)  and is based in the Czech Republic.

THE REPORT FROM THE “PLATFORM”

Kristallnacht, 74 years ago tonight, was the Night of Broken Glass, in which widespread coordinated violence against Jewish citizens of Germany, supported by the Nazi regime, resulted in at least 91 deaths, 30,000 arrests and transfers to concentration camps, and over a thousand synagogues burned down. The event was a major harbinger of the imminent genocide of European Jewry.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Germany, News & Views, Prague "Platform", Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Comments Off on Kristallnacht Becomes PR Hook for Double Genociders at Berlin Events of the “Prague Process Platform”

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: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages, 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”

Seventy Years Declaration: Summary Coverage to 1 November 2012



The Seventy Years Declaration

Solemnly commemorates the Holocaust and reaffirms human rights of all people. Opposes the Prague Declaration and ‘Double Genocide’ politics. Rejects glorification of the Waffen SS of Estonia and Latvia and the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF).

Lithuania’s foreign minister’s “moustache response” came within minutes of SYD’s release.

 ———

TEXT AND LIST OF FOUNDING SIGNATORIES

PRESENTED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

UPDATE: DOCUMENTARY FILM RELEASED

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Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Denis MacShane, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, History, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Seventy Years Declaration: Summary Coverage to 1 November 2012

Ukrainian Holocaust Revisionists Woo Canada, Exposed by Historian from Lund, Sweden . . .



SUMMARY OF EVENTS AND COVERAGE:

1: Ultranationalists sponsor a North American lecture tour for a Lviv-based museum director (his museum features a profoundly photoshopped image). Harvard University (18 Oct) and a meeting with Canada’s prime minister (19 Oct) are included; the PM unwittingly lends credence to the Holocaust revisionist campaign emanating from Eastern Europe.

2: Lund University (Sweden) historian Dr. Per Anders Rudling protests.

Dr. Per Anders Rudling (Lund University, Sweden)

3: Canadian missile lands in Sweden: nationalist organizations complain to the vice-chancellor at Lund University in Sweden about Dr. Rudling.

4: Exclusive: Per Anders Rudling in DefendingHistory.

5: Scholars issue open letter.

Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Events, News & Views, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine | Comments Off on Ukrainian Holocaust Revisionists Woo Canada, Exposed by Historian from Lund, Sweden . . .

Jewish Center in Ukraine Apparently Duped into Honoring a Nazi Collaborationist Organization


According to a report received today from a publication in Ukraine (reproduced in full below), the launch of the new Menorah complex in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, billed as the city’s largest building, includes a new museum containing an exhibit that naively whitewashes the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an infamous pro-Hitler fascist organization responsible for many Jewish deaths during the Holocaust. The exhibit is quoted in the report as including information on Jews “saved” by the OUN, with no mention of its large-scale record of murder.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Ukraine | Comments Off on Jewish Center in Ukraine Apparently Duped into Honoring a Nazi Collaborationist Organization

“Red-Brown Commission” is Formal Member of Revisionists’ “Platform of European Memory and Conscience”


It was today confirmed by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience that the Lithuanian government’s “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes of Lithuania” (known for brevity as the “Red-Brown Commission”) is a formal member of the “Platform.” This is further confirmed on the Platform’s website under the list of “Platform Members” (right hand column).

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on “Red-Brown Commission” is Formal Member of Revisionists’ “Platform of European Memory and Conscience”

The Real Truth



O P I N I O N

by Efraim Zuroff

Note: The following letter to the editor in today’s edition of the Baltimore Jewish Times is republished here with the author’s permission. 


 

According to the title chosen for Simone Ellin’s review (Oct. 19) of Ellen Cassedy’s book, We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, the author “explores the Lithuanian Holocaust from all vantage points.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Cassedy neglects the most important vantage point of the history of the Shoa in Lithuania, the uniquely extensive role played by Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews (not only in Lithuania, but also in Belarus and Poland), a fact incredibly omitted from Ellin’s review. In that respect, it is clear that Ellin was so captivated by Cassedy’s narrative that she failed to realize that the author presented her readers with a very one-sided picture of contemporary Lithuanian-Jewish relations in the wake of the Holocaust.

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Posted in Books, Efraim Zuroff, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on The Real Truth

Ukrainian Holocaust-Revisionist Museum Seeks Legitimacy with Well-Oiled North American Tour; Dr. Rudling Protests


1: Ultranationalists sponsor a North American lecture tour for a Lviv-based museum director. Harvard University (18 Oct) and a meeting with Canada’s prime minister (19 Oct) included.
2: Lund University (Sweden) historian Dr. Per Anders Rudling protests.

Dr. Per Anders Rudling

3: Canadian organizations complain to the vice-chancellor in Sweden about Dr. Rudling.
4: Exclusive: Per Anders Rudling in DefendingHistory
5: Scholars issue open letter
Posted in Museums, Sweden, Ukraine | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Ukrainian Holocaust-Revisionist Museum Seeks Legitimacy with Well-Oiled North American Tour; Dr. Rudling Protests

Self-Induced Confusion



B O O K S

by Olga Zabludoff

Review of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust by Ellen Cassedy. University of Nebraska Press, 2012.


Had this title been billed as a simple memoir of Cassedy’s trip to Lithuania in the summer of 2004, my criticism of her book would be tempered. She had gone to the land of her ancestors to study Yiddish at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and to connect with her Jewish roots. The professors and mentors she encounters at the Yiddish Institute come alive, as do the various Lithuanians and Jews with whom she connects. Cassedy is a good writer who captures physical details well. But even at that, this reviewer found the memoir to be superficial.

The major problem is that Cassedy’s book is being promoted as the Bible of the Lithuanian Holocaust by advocates for the current Lithuanian government and elite establishment which aspire to paint for the outside world a distorted version of the Holocaust. A version defined in shades of gray and the confusion they generate.  A version that incorporates the mythology of equivalency between crimes committed by the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes.

SEE ALSO THE REVIEWS BY

Dovid Katz in the Algemeiner Journal

Allan Nadler in the Forward

Efraim Zuroff in Haaretz

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Books, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Olga Zabludoff, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, VilNews.com, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like? | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Self-Induced Confusion

Juozas Šibaila, Another “Hero” with a Suppressed Biography


 


O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

Following the Lithuanian parliament’s recognition of the February 16, 1949 declaration of the Council of the Union of the Struggle for Lithuanian Freedom as an act with the force of law, there was a natural interest in questions about who the partisans who signed that declaration were. It would seem the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania would be the organization to present the most comprehensive biographies for these people.

Unfortunately that’s not the case.

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Juozas Šibaila, Another “Hero” with a Suppressed Biography

Happy 91st Birthday to Dr. Rachel Margolis



Tel Aviv’s Leivick House Releases Video of 2009 tribute by the late Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter ♦ Also: FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN ♦ 5 MEMBERS OF US CONGRESS ♦ LATE LITHUANIAN PM ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS ♦ TABLET MAGAZINE ♦ ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS ♦ KEENE STATE COLLEGE ♦ SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ♦ LORD JANNER OF BRAUNSTONE ♦ ADL DIRECTOR ABRAHAM FOXMAN ♦ NCSJ ♦ METRO WEST HOLOCAUST COUNCIL ♦ JEWISH CHRONICLE ♦ ALGEMEINER JOURNAL (& 2) ♦ RACHEL MARGOLIS.COM ♦ FACT SHEET

Posted in Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Israel, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Happy 91st Birthday to Dr. Rachel Margolis

Swedish Historian Stands up to Ukrainian Ultranationalists’ “Conquest of Canada”



1: Ultranationalists sponsor a North American lecture tour for a Lviv-based museum director. Harvard University (18 Oct) and a meeting with Canada’s prime minister (19 Oct) included

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Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Media Watch, News & Views, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine | Tagged | Comments Off on Swedish Historian Stands up to Ukrainian Ultranationalists’ “Conquest of Canada”

2012: Voices of Courage


Lithuanian Citizens Spoke Out

Eight Signatories of SYD: MEPs Justas Paleckis, Vilija Blinkevičiūtė; MPs Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Justinas Karosas, Marija Aušrinė Pavilionienė, Julius Sabatauskas, Algirdas Sysas, Birutė Vėsaitė
Dr. Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius)
MP Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis2, 3, 4
MPs V.P. Andriukaitis and A. Sysas
Algis Davidavičius

MEP Leonidas Donskis: 1 & 2

Dr. Darius Udrys
Documentary films by: Saulius Beržinis; Alicija Žukauskaitė
Nine demonstrators at the opening of Vilnius University’s exhibit for an antisemitic and homophobic artist
plus many Lithuanian-citizen signatories of Olga Zabludoff’s petition against the capital’s neo-Nazi march, Krystyna Anna Steiger’s against memorials to Nazi collaborators, and Monica Lowenberg’s calling on the Lithuanian government to take simple and honorable steps
plus DefendingHistory regulars Evaldas Balčiūnas, Milan Chersonski, Geoff Vasil
Posted in Boxes | Comments Off on 2012: Voices of Courage

2012: SYD is Here to Stay


The Seventy Years Declaration (SYD)

Europe’s first parliamentary response to the Prague Declaration of 2008

An end to the “Prague Process” era of unchallenged Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation spin

Text of the Declaration: in English ◊ in Finnish ◊ in French ◊ in German ◊ in Lithuanian ◊ in Russian ◊ in Polish ◊ in Yiddish

Presented to the President of the European Parliament; video clip

Early debates & coverage

Just Released:

Website ◊ Reviews ◊ YouTube

Posted in Boxes | Comments Off on 2012: SYD is Here to Stay