The courtroom was packed as post-Soviet democratic Hungary finally put one of its own citizens on trial for alleged complicity in the genocide of the country’s Jewish population in the Holocaust. The massive local media coverage pointed to what some observers called a mood of national catharsis breaking a taboo against admission of Nazi-era complicity that has swept much of the new-accession state area in the European Union.
Author Archives: Defending History
Democratic Hungary’s First Nazi War Crimes Trial Opens in Budapest
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Hungary, News & Views
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Lithuanian ‘Government Historians’ blame Efraim Zuroff and Dovid Katz for the Country’s Holocaust Problems
Professor Saulius Sužiedėlis (Millersville University, Pennsylvania), a major historian who has recently been flown to conferences far and wide courtesy of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, and politician Ronaldas Račinskas, deputy chairman of the state-funded ‘Red-Brown commission’ have blasted Dr. Efraim Zuroff and Professor Dovid Katz for being responsible for Lithuania’s international Holocaust issues, in a major panel discussion that appeared in the media both as a sound file and in an edited transcript format. There were also other members of the panel discussion.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Israel, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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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.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Brantsovsky, Fanja Brancovskaja, Lithuanian Human Rights Association, Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lithuanian prosecutors, Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process, Rachel Margolis, Vilna Ghetto, Yitzhak Arad
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Masked Men Throw Smoke Bombs in Small Vilnius Theater, Disrupt Film on Anti-Fascists
On Monday evening 2 May (Yom Hashoah), at about 7 PM, five or six masked perpetrators forced their way into a small theater in Vilnius showing a film about the formation of the anti-fascist movement in France and hurled military-type smoke bombs at the screen. Viewers, including a child, fled in panic and unable to breathe. Some witnesses claimed they saw members of the Lithuanian military participating.
Posted in Film, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Use and Abuse of Sugihara
Tagged anti-fascists Vilnius, Artoteka, neo-Nazis Lithuania, Vilnius, Yom Hashoah
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Budapest Judge Throws Out War Criminal’s ‘Libel’ Case against Dr Efraim Zuroff, praises the Holocaust Historian for Pursuing Justice
Budapest judge Viktor Vadasz of the Pest Central District Court ruled today in favor of Dr Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust historian and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, in a case that foreign observers have taken to be emblamatic for the sometimes topsy-turvy world of East European politics: glorification of Nazi war criminals amidst vilification of those who would want them brought to justice and the truth about local Holocaust history told and taught.
Posted in Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Hungary, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Eyewitness Report: ‘March of the Living’ at Ponar Killing Site near the Lithuanian Capital
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
I attended the March of the Living today at Ponár (Polish Ponary, Lithuanian Paneriai), the mass killing site outside Vilnius, Lithuania. It is Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. I had been to Ponár only once before, because a friend of mine was afraid she would get lost taking the city buses there and back.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Double Games, Geoff Vasil, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
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March of the Living at Vilnius Mass-Murder Site: Sergey Kanovich Speaks Out
Sergey Kanovich
Vilnius-born author Sergey Kanovich (Sergejus Kanovičius) published in today’s issue of Bernardinai a short and powerful statement for the ceremony later today at Ponár (Paneriai), the mass-murder site outside Vilnius where 100,000 civilians, among them 70,000 Jews, were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Most of the actual shooting was carried out by local Lithuanian units sometimes nowadays glorified as ‘anti-Soviet heroes’ by certain establishment circles, even as a parallel series of Holocaust commemoration activities are produced during this year’s parallel years of commemoration proclaimed in late 2010 by the Lithuanian parliament (see here and here) for 2011, which marks the seventieth anniversary of the events.
“They took your life away. And there are those who continue to try to assassinate your memory — again, today, almost without resistance and with impunity, now and again, the spirit of swastikas and the white armbands of the LAF casts a shadow over Jerusalem of Lithuania. And today there are those who still desire to see your executioners as heroes.”
— SERGEY KANOVICH
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Sergey Kanovich
Tagged Paneriai, Ponar, Prague Declaration, Prague Process, Sergejus Kanovicius, Sergey Kanovich
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War Criminal’s ‘Libel Case’ against Holocaust Historian headed for Verdict This Tuesday in Budapest
By most accounts, it could only happen in the ‘Eastern European Union’ region, where powers that be often spare no effort to use (or abuse) the law (‘lawfare’) and state institutions in the cause of Holocaust Obfuscation. Anything that can enhance the status of the Holocaust’s perpetrators and diminish that of the victims, survivors and their current advocates is pursued with a sense of convinced national purpose that by most accounts would have been considered inconceivable at the time of European Union and NATO accession.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Hungary, News & Views
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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.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Human Rights, Media Watch, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, Vilnius
Tagged Emanuelis Zingeris, Genocide Center Vilnius, Genocide Centre Vilnius, Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process
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Why Does the State Commemorate Murderers?
O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
Probably every mature person living in Lithuania has heard about the mass murder of people at the beginning of World War II. During the first months of the war ― in a period of less than half a year ― more than 100,000 people were murdered, most of them Jews.
“Evil deeds uncondemned often end up idolized.”
It is sad, but there are more than enough facts corroborating that Lithuanians — regular officers of the Lithuanian military — took part in the mass murders of civilians, women and children.
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Evaldas Balčiūnas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
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Neo-Nazis Amok in Lithuania; Arrests at ‘Straight Zero’
In apparent homage to the April 20th birthday of Adolf Hitler, neo-Nazis hoisted Nazi flags high over the heart of Vilnius atop the former Labor Palace building on Tauro Hill. Details here.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Events, News & Views
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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.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Museums, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
Tagged Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process
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Education Ministry and Association of Museums Encourage Activities to Commemorate the Activities of ‘Partisans’ including the Murderers who Unleashed the Lithuanian Holocaust; No mention of anti-Nazi partisans…
At the behest of Lithuania’s Education Ministry, the Association of Lithuanian Museums today canvassed museums and other institutions asking for information about what is being done concretely to commemorate the celebration of local fascists who collaborated with Hitler, including the killers who unleashed the Lithuanian Holocaust (Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF), and the collaborationist Provisional Government (PG).
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Freedom of Speech is not ‘Pick and Choose’: On the Paleckis Trial in Vilnius
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
DefendingHistory.com disagrees with each and every word that Lithuanian politician Algirdas Paleckis has uttered about the events in Vilnius, Lithuania, of January 13th 1991 when courageous unarmed protesters for freedom and independence were mercilessly murdered by armed Soviet forces.
As students of Voltaire (though the famous quote is by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall), we disapprove of all that Paleckis has said about January 1991 (and consider it to be sheer nonsense), but we will join the fight to the finish for his right to say it and not be subject to trial in a member-state of the European Union and NATO.
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Media Watch, Opinion, US State Dept Manipulated?
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Foreign Ministry’s Crack-Team Holocaust-event Professors Heading for Warsaw
Professors Saulius Sužiedėlis (Millersville University, Pennsylvania) and Šarūnas Liekis (Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, etc), two excellent historians with impressive track records, have again been engaged by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to present a Holocaust program abroad for foreign consumption.
Posted in Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Poland, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis
Tagged L.A.F., Sarunas Liekis, Saulius Suziedelis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
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Catherine Chatterley leads Opposition to Holocaust Obfuscation campaign in Canada
Dr. Catherine Chatterley, founding director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
In a bold op-ed published in the Winnipeg Free Press on 2 April, Dr. Catherine Chatterley has spoken out against attempts by some elements in Canada’s Ukrainian-heritage community to derail a planned Holocaust exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) on the grounds, broadly speaking, that such an exhibit would unduly emphasize Jewish suffering and cause to be underrepresented Ukrainian suffering in Stalin’s murderous state-caused famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s.
The campaign has been accompanied by the printing and wide distribution in Canada of offensively and antisemitically manipulated versions of an illustration that had appeared in a 1947 Ukrainian edition of George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm.
Posted in Canada, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Museums, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Has LRG Media (UK) been Compromised?
The prestigious British-based LRG Media, a multimedia company with an impressive record of achievements and awards, has apparently been targeted by certain elements in Lithuanian government circles as the latest ‘Naive Useful Foreign Entity’ to help make respectable internationally the state-sponsored campaigns for Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, and selective toleration of current antisemitism.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Arts, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Film, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged David Wachs, Fake Litvak Forum, Litvak Multimedia Project, LRG Media
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Lithuanian government’s ‘Jewish Affairs Advisor’ calls TV interview of DH.com editor ‘Goebbels-worthy’
Arkady Vinokur (Arkadijus Vinokuras), official Advisor on Jewish Affairs to the prime minister of Lithuania, published an article in today’s Lietuvos rytas expressing the view that a television interview given by this journal’s editor is ‘worthy of Goebbels’.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views
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Has the Forward Association abandoned Elementary Ethics?
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
On February 25th, the Yiddish Forverts in New York published a defamatory ad-hominem attack on this journal’s editor.
The article was signed by ‘Jacob London (Oxford)’, the pseudonym of Sovetish Heymland veteran Gennady Estraikh who was secretary to the Soviet magazine’s editor Aaron Vergelis for many years. Now, a resident of New York, he is listed as the paper’s editor for its ‘European Bureau’. It is quite shocking for many readers that the paper’s editor-in-chief, Boris Sandler, himself a Sovetish Heymland veteran, allows for the paper’s abuse for fake-name, fake-place vicious attack on colleagues in the field of Yiddish Studies.
Posted in Dovid Katz, Human Rights, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Boris Sandler, CCNY Professor Jack Jacobs, Elliot PAlevsky, Evan Zimroth, Forverts asotsiatsye, Grammar of the Yiddish Language, Intensive Yiddish, Jack Jacobs Jewish Labor Bund, Jack Jacobs Lithuania, Jack Jacobs Vilnius, Jacob London, Jewish Daily Forward; Forverts; Gennady Estraikh; Boris Sandler; Jack Jacobs; Elliott Palevsky; Sovetish Heymland; Sovetish Heimland, Jewish Labor Bund, Lithuanian Consulate New York, Professor Jack Jacobs, Sam Norich, Samuel Norich, Yankl Jacobs
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Kevin Hamilton, Canada’s Chargé d’affaires in Vilnius, Stands Up Against Far-Right Slander
Kevin Hamilton, Canada's Chargé d'affaires in Vilnius
Kevin Hamilton, Canada’s chargé d’affaires at its embassy in Vilnius, published a bold letter today in the daily Respublika, in response to a typically homophobic article in the popular newspaper. The original article (published 25 March), in the spirit of contemporary East European far-right discourse, tried to intentionally confuse Equal Rights for sexual minorities with pedophilia, and to give the impression that Canada supports the latter too.
Moreover, the force of his letter compelled Respublika to issue a rare (if rather half-hearted) retraction, printed in the form of a reply underneath his letter. For a sampling of Respublika’s homophobia and antisemitism, see an image of their 2009 front page caricature of The Jew and The Gay holding up the world (here), and, the way in which the editor handled criticism of that effort (here).
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Canada, Human Rights, News & Views
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