On 27 January, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021:
Silvia Foti in the New York Times on her Grandfather Jonas Noreika
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Lev Golinkin in the Forward on the Proliferation of Statues and Monuments Glorifying Nazi Collaborators and — their Export to the US, Canada and Other Western Nations
Lithuania section
For background, see Defending History’s sections on Collaborators Glorified; Holocaust Survivors Blamed; Double Genocide; the example of Kaunas (where the Lithuanian Holocaust got underway on 23 June 1941, slated to be Capital of European Culture in 2022). See also academic background, and earlier paper on Export of the wider double genocide revisionist paradigm developed as a primary tool of Holocaust obfuscation.
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Head of Lithuanian Parliament’s ‘History Committee’ (Ultranationalist History-Fixing Unit?) uses Holocaust Remembrance Day to blame Jews for Holocaust
American ambassador responds — defending history — and breaking long Public silence on state-spnsored ultranationalist Holocaust revisionism
Other diplomats speak out; Statement from the ambassador of Germany; Official Jewish Community responds; Holocaust Remembrance Day statement from elected leader of Vilnius jewish Community notes glorification of perpetrators. Defending History notes that attempted deflection of Holocaust blame onto the Jewish ghetto police etc. comes right from the work of the state-sponsored “Genocide Center” (see e.g. review of A. Bubnys’s book on the Vilna Ghetto). Indeed, the far-right “blame the victims” strategy is echosed even in the single “Holocaust basement cubicle” introduced after years of protest, in 2011 at Vilnius’s Genocide Museum in the city center. It therefore emerges that the typically cowardly are using the occasion to “praise” members of the current Conservative Homeland Union rightwing government for “disagreeing” with their parliamentary colleague, whose outburst is no more than a typical local symptom of their obsession with Double Genocide, Holocaust obfuscation and revisionism, and glorification of perpetrators. Will they be asked about the bigger, better Noreika plaque in central Vilnius and worship of the Holocaust collaborator “all over the place” in recent times?
Cnaan Liphshiz Reports in JTA
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Rachel Kostanian Honored on 91st Birthday
The long-term head of Vilnius’s ‘Green House’ Holocaust museum mounted a decades-long noble struggle to guard the historic truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust. This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day coincided with the run-up to her 91st birthday, which attracted generous tributes from around the world, including former British, Irish and Norwegian ambassadors to Lithuania. Her museum synthesized historic accuracy about the Holocaust with the authentic flavor of the country’s storied prewar living Yiddish civilization.