The organization Latvian National Front has sent to the email address of the Embassy of the USA, as well as other embassies, including the Embassy of Israel, a letter with the following content (translated from Latvian):
Author Archives: Defending History
Latvian National Front Releases its Letter to the American Ambassador in Riga
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Latvia, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
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Clemens Heni Critiques London Conference
Dr Clemens Heni, a prominent Berlin-based scholar specializing in antisemitism, today critiques, in this journal, the 6-7 February 2011 conference in London entitled ‘No Simple Stories: Jewish-Lithuanian relations between coexistence and violence’ (conference program here; poster here). His opinion piece, “A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah” is here.
Dr Clemens Heni
Dr Heni, a former research fellow at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) at Yale University (USA), was arguably the first to publish an academic paper on the antisemitic aspects of the 2008 Prague Declaration. His paper, which appeared in late 2009, is available here.
Additional coverage of the London conference (6-7 February 2011): Dovid Katz on DefendingHistory.com; Simon Rocker in the Jewish Chronicle.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Clemens Heni, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom
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A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah
O P I N I O N
by Clemens Heni
An Open Letter to the Scholars Reading Papers at the 6-7 February UCL-Warburg Symposium in London
On February 6 and 7 of 2011, there will be a conference held in London, entitled “No simple stories: Jewish-Lithuanian relations between coexistence and violence”. Taking into account that some 95% of Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Holocaust — the highest percentage in all of Europe — this is quite a heartbreaking title, isn’t it?
“No simple stories” — really? For those Lithuanians involved, killing Jews was quite simple, even before the Germans arrived.
“No simple stories.”
Really?
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom, Yitzhak Arad
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Statement on ‘Double Genocide’ issued by Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model Abroad
In a statement published today on its website, the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model Abroad takes note of the antisemitic foundations of the new ‘Double Genocide’ movement in Eastern Europe, and particularly in the Baltic states. It also takes the Lithuanian government to task for the 2010 law that effectively threatens imprisonment for those who reject ‘Double Genocide’.
Posted in Didier Bertin, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process
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In Major Speech to UK’s Parliament, MP MacShane Confronts Hungarian Injustice, Baltics’ Double Genocide Campaign
MP Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane, the veteran Labour Party member of the British Parliament for Rotherham, gave a major speech on antisemitism in the House of Commons yesterday. (Full text of Denis MacShane’s 20 January speech.)
In contrast to politicians across Europe who pay lip service to the battle against antisemitism ‘in general’, Mr MacShane emphasized the actual issues of the day, including two major and ongoing scandals sadly involving member states of the European Union in the new accession eastern area. In both cases, his speech serves to overcome the veil of reticence sometimes encountered when it comes to criticizing Britain’s partners in the EU, NATO, the OSCE and other international organizations.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Denis MacShane, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Human Rights, Hungary, Latvia, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
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Polish Ambassador to Lithuania HE Janusz Skolimowski Speaks Out Boldly on Latest Holocaust Denial
VILNIUS—The following is the text of HE Polish ambassador Janusz Skolimowski’s 26 November letter in Veidas, which the ambassador copied to Lithuania’s Minister of the Interior. This authorized English translation was kindly provided to Defending History by the Embassy of Poland here. The letter followed one by seven other ambassadors regarding the same events in Lithuania.
From: Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Vilnius
To: Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine “Veidas”
For the attention of: Mr. Raimundas Palaitis, Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania
Concerns: Article of Petras Stankeras dated November 14th, 2010:
“The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg — the biggest legal farce in history”
Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief,
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Janusz Skolimowski, Nuremberg Trials, Petras Stankeras, Polish Embassy in Vilnius, Raimundas Palaitis, Veidas
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Budapest Court Accepts Kepiro Appeal for Reinstatement of his Case against Dr Zuroff
Dr Efraim Zuroff
The ludicrous spectre of the convicted (but unpunished) Nazi war criminal, who turns 97 next month, suing Dr Efraim Zuroff for ‘libel’ has just been revived. Dr Zuroff is director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, an acclaimed author and historian, and the SWC’s chief Nazi hunter.
Observers were under the impression at last month’s hearing in Budapest that the case had been put to rest by the district court, when the judge threw it out on 16 December after some ten minutes (eyewitness report here). But the war criminal’s lawyer appealed that decision.
Posted in Hungary, News & Views
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Eastern EU Foreign Ministers continue to pursue ‘Double Genocide’ Resolutions, with an ‘Antisemitism Conference’ as Plausible Cover
According to a report that appeared yesterday on Baltic Course, the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic and Lithuania will continue to pursue ‘Double Genocide’ resolutions in the European Union, sometimes known in Eurospeak as ‘(equal) evaluation of totalitarian regimes’.
They appear to be wholly undaunted by the recent European Commission fiasco only several weeks ago.
At the same time, they have announced their conference on antisemitism in Prague, apparently to blunt international criticism of the ‘Double Genocide’ campaign. This is particularly curious in the case of the Lithuanian foreign minister, who has yet to apologise for his own ‘clasically’ antisemitic outburst last October, which drew a swift response from his country’s small but proud Jewish community.
Posted in Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Bloomington Scholar Exposes Racist Images in Popular Language Manual
Christine Beresniova, a doctoral scholar at Indiana University (Bloomington) has exposed the disturbingly racist images in a popular Lithuanian language manual that have disturbed foreign Lithuanian language students for many years. The public disclosure is reported today in an article in the main daily newspaper in Vilnius, Lietuvos rytas.
The most infamous image features two pairs of stereotypes. There is the Lithuanian woman in national folk costume and a crown on her head, and as foreign counterpart, a bare-breasted black woman in Africa with weird headgear. The caption to the illustration translates ‘This woman is a Lithuanian, and that one is an African’, as if Africa is a country, one-to-one comparable to ‘Lithuania’.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Human Rights, Racism, United States
Tagged Christine Beresniova, Lietuvos rytas, Racism in Lithuania
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Lord Janner Confronts Revisionists’ ‘Double Genocide’, marking 2011’s Holocaust Memorial Day
Lord Janner of Braunstone (formerly Greville Janner, MP), in a statement published today on the Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism Foundation’s website, praised
leaders of all political parties in the UK who have steadfastly supported cross-party work against racism and antisemitism and in the cause of proper and serious Holocaust commemoration. The essay, entitled ‘Never Again’, is issued on the eve of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th.
In his major substantive contribution, Lord Janner explains the connection of antisemitism with the current campaign, spearheaded in Lithuania and Latvia, to have Nazi and Soviet crimes declared equivalent in principle (‘Double Genocide’). The most recent incident involving efforts by a group of East European states to insert ‘Double Genocide’ into European Union policy occurred last month.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lord Janner of Braunstone, News & Views, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom
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Wiesenthal Center’s Annual Report on Nazi War Criminal Investigations
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, in partnership with the Snider Social Action Institute, has just released online its annual report Worldwide Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals (April 1, 2009 — March 31, 2010).
Posted in News & Views
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Tumavičiūtė Strikes Again, in — Veidas
Retired Vilnius University lecturer Irena Tumavičiūtė, whose 29 January 2008 article in the antisemitic newspaper Lietuvos aidas is credited with egging on right-wing parliamentarians and prosecutors to ‘go for’ Holocaust Survivors Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dr Rachel Margolis, has published a new article on the Holocaust, concentrating on Auschwitz, in the popular mainstream magazine Veidas. It appeared in the magazine’s January 10th issue.
Posted in Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Media Watch, News & Views
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Lithuania and Tolerance
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
2010 was an astonishing year for human rights in Lithuania. Toward the beginning of 2010 there were public demonstrations in the capital by self-designated patriotic youth, decked out in various paramilitary costumes, in plain clothes bearing variations on swastikas and wearing white arm bands. These Lithuanian neo-Nazis marched across the main streets and squares in Vilnius on independence day (March 11th), made a showing to protest against a silent march of people from the main square to a cemetery to honor the dead on Soviet Victory Day (May 9th), and most spectacularly managed to outnumber 10 to 1 Lithuania’s first gay pride march (May 8th) with a violent mob throwing objects, hurtling insults and proudly waving flags with pseudo-swastikas behind police lines. The gay pride march almost didn’t happen, as it hadn’t many years in a row, because of bureaucratic impedance from the Vilnius municipality over issuing a permit and from law enforcement and the parliament. The neo-Nazi marches, on the other hand, had support from within parliament, MPs who personally asked for, and got, permits from the city for a march. Several MPs also came to the anti-gay pride protest with bullhorns, stormed police barriers and generally foamed at the mouth, caught on camera.
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion
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Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) Prewar Proclamations on Plans for their Jewish Fellow-Citizens of Lithuania
What did the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) put in writing concerning its intentions for fellow citizens who were Jews in the days and weeks before the German invaders took actual control of various locations within Lithuania?
These excerpts are all from the translations from Lithuanian in the English edition of Joseph Levinson’s The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania (Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania: Vilnius 2006). The full texts (or much larger excerpts) appear in the chapter Documents Speak available here as PDF by permission of Joseph Levinson.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Documents, History, Joseph Levinson, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs
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When Past is Not Even Past
O P I N I O N
by Mikhail Iossel
This comment is a response to the statement recently published by the Lithuanian Human Rights Association (LHRA).
What’s genuinely sad, with regard to the pathetic document in question — among other things of similar revealing character, to be sure — is the realization that none of those self-sufficient, accomplished, educated, and supposedly respectable people, the LHRA leadership, are likely to exist in a vacuum. They are surrounded by the concentric circles of friends, colleagues, students… fellow human-rights (!) activists — presumably, at least to some significant extent, sharing their views on those vile and treacherous, kinless-cosmopolite Jews’ international conspiracy to humiliate Lithuania by, you know, constantly guilt-tripping and browbeating the poor little innocent freedom-loving country into remembering and finishing the unpleasant business of accounting for this one, admittedly unfortunate, event of past long gone.
Posted in Mikhail Iossel, Opinion
Tagged human rights in Lithuania, LHRA (Vilnius), Mikhail Iossel, Mikhail Iossel + Vilnius, SLS (Summer Literary Seminars)
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When a ‘Human Rights Association’ accepts and repeats the antisemitic canards in town
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
“Also, it has been started to require the sentence of the citizens of the Jewish nationality ― Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky and Rachel Margolis, as these citizens (former Soviet guerrillas) have organized the massive slaughter of civilians in Kaniūkai Village, Lithuania (killing 38 civilians) on 29 January 1944. Attention should be paid to the fact that the very Y. Arad has departed to Israel.” — from the statement just published by the Lithuanian Human Rights Association (LHRA), signed by ten of its leading experts and approved by its committee.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Opinion, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE)
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Six Countries Try to ‘Slip in’ Double Genocide in the ‘Stockholm Programme’; European Commission says ‘No’
Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry had announced on 14 December 2010 that it was the initiator of a new demand from six East European countries ― Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania — to Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, that Double Genocide sentiments, and support for effective criminalization of the view that the Holocaust was a unique genocide, be incorporated in the new Stockholm Programme before the end of 2010. Less than a week earlier, Lithuania’s president took the same demand with her to a meeting in Brussels.
The Road from Prague to Stockholm (via Vilnius?)
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Hungary, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Latvia, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process
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An Orwellian Description of the Drive to Revise History in the Direction of Double Genocide
Extract (from original posting by François Guesnet, Corob Reader in Jewish History, University College London) from the description of the (foregone?) conclusions of the “No Simples Stories” conference on 6-10 February 2011:
Posted in Documents, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom
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Estonia’s Absence on last Red-Brown Letter Explained by ‘Blizzard’
The foreign minister of Lithuania explained to reporters today the absence of Estonia’s name on the 14 December letter to Viviane Reding of the European Commission, asking for Double Genocide language and sentiment to be inserted into the Stockholm Programme, a move since rejected by the Commission. This journal was among those speculating on a possible change in Estonia’s policy.
But today, the Lithuanian foreign minister, Audronius Ažubalis, explained to reporters that his Estonian counterpart ‘only arrived, because of the blizzard, after the other signatures had been signed, and wished to correct the text. But we didn’t have an opportunity’.
It remains for Estonia to clarify matters.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Estonia, EU, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Polish Embassy Releases English Text of Ambassador’s Letter
The Polish Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, today released to DefendingHistory.com the authorized English text of the letter which Ambassador Janusz Skolimowski had published in Veidas, on 26 November 2010, in relation to the Stankeras Affair and Holocaust Denial more generally; it was issued one day after the letter from seven European ambassadors to Lithuania’s leaders.
The English text of Ambassador Skolimowski’s letter is posted here.
It is hoped that release of the Polish ambassador’s letter will make it easier for release to be authorized of the seven other ambassadors’ letter, of 25 November, 2010, as recently proposed in the Commons by MP Denis MacShane.
Posted in EU, News & Views, Poland
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