British Foreign Office on Latvia’s National Waffen SS Fest:
Collaborators Glorified
British Updates
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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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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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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UK’s Minister for Europe Refuses to Criticize Baltic Glorification of Nazism
British Foreign Office on Latvia’s National Waffen SS Fest:
Minister for Europe Enters the Fray; Of Churchill’s Party, He Seems to Forget Great Britain’s Heroism in Bringing Down Hitler and — Scourge (and Historic Result) of Nazi-Worship in the Baltics
Anna Sheinman Reports in the London Jewish Chronicle
Images from the 2013 Waffen SS events in Central Riga
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
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In Obeliai (Abél) and Rokiškis (Rákishok): More State-Sponsored Glorification of Nazi Collaborators
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
Years ago, when I first started doubting the veracity of certain propaganda intended to diminish the culpability of local forces in the Holocaust, I interviewed an elderly woman who was an eye-witness to what happened in late June of 1941 in Rokiškis (in Yiddish: Rákishok) in northern (or northeastern) Lithuania.
Obeliai (Abel) 1942: Is curiosity or concern sparked by this “celebration of 1941 partisans” coming from the apex of Nazi rule in Lithuania (1942, when the local Jews were already all murdered)? It seems not. This photo is of the 1942 Nazi-era memorial torn down by the Soviets, and just replaced by a new one, commemorating the same pro-Nazi “partisans” …
She told me how a bunch of young men turned savage, rounded up Jewish men, stuck them in what amounted to a pig sty surrounded by barbed wire in the center of town, and then tortured and humiliated them until they murdered them. She said this gang of savages went by the name of Savisaugos batalionas, which is Lithuanian for self-defense battalion. Were they led by Germans? No, she said, there hadn’t been a single German to be seen.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Geoff Vasil, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Rákishok (Rokiškis), Symbology
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Obeliai (Abel), Rakishok (Rokiskis)
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Images from the March 16th 2013 Annual Glorification of Latvian Waffen SS in Riga
by Monica Lowenberg
Riga, 1943: Latvian soldiers proudly march with a Latvian flag and a Nazi flag. Some of the men were conscripted into the Waffen SS, but a number were volunteers.
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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
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Summary Coverage of March 16th 2013 Waffen SS March in Riga, Latvia
Annual Glorification of Latvia’s Hitler-Serving Waffen SS; International Petition
Opinion: R. BRODSKY; LATVIA’S UK AMBASSADOR; MONICA LOWENBERG
JOËL RUBINFELD’S NEWSLETTER ON EVENTS OF MARCH 16TH
Reports: AP; Delfi; Fox; Jewish News — JNS.org; J. Kaža; Reuters; RIA; RT (video; 2); Times of Israel; Washington Post; YNet; Video of wreath laying; Yahoo. Gallery of images. More media. WWN media list.
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MARINA SOLODKIN’S DEATH AND HER LAST PUBLIC STATEMENT
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INTERNATIONAL PETITION
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
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Believe It Or Not: Lithuanian Parliament Honors Organizers of Neo-Nazi March in Central Vilnius
Reporting in today’s Lrytas.lt (Lietuvos rytas), Dovydas Pancerovas describes the parliamentary honors bestowed on organizers of last Monday’s March 11th neo-Nazi march on the main boulevard, Gedimino, of the nation’s capital, Vilnius (DH eyewitness reports by Anna Shepherd and Geoff Vasil; see also page 1 report). The following translation from the original Lithuanian is by Geoff Vasil.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, EU, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Vilnius
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Latvian Ambassador to the UK Comments on March 16th Waffen SS March in Riga
LONDON—Latvia’s ambassador to the UK has responded to a UK Conservative Party MP’s question about the Waffen SS events held in the center of Latvia’s capital, Riga, on March 16th each year. The office of UK Parliament MP David Amess, who represents Southend West, released the response dated 1 March 2013, which he received from the Latvian ambassador to the UK, HE Eduards Stiprais. It is reproduced in full below (as PDF here), courtesy of the office of Monica Lowenberg in London, whose petition and media guide have brought the Latvian SS marches to increased international scrutiny.
MONICA LOWENBERG’S REPLY TO THE LATVIAN AMBASSADOR IN 2012
See also Monica Lowenberg’s 2012 exchange of ideas with the Latvian ambassador to the UK. More in Defending History’s Latvia section.
Ambassador Stiprais’s letter to MP Amess:
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
Tagged Davis Amess MP, March 16th in Latvia, Waffen SS in Latvia
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Vilnius Street Name Proposed for Rescuer Out in Boondocks; But Please Remove Nazi Collaborators from City Center!
O P I N I O N
The Defending History community welcomes today’s news that a street (and/or square) in the Verkiai district, Vilnius’s northernmost neighborhood (and popularly considered to be just north of the city), may be named for Ona Šimaitė, the enormously courageous librarian who defied the Nazis and their local collaborators by risking her life to save Jewish citizens of the country. But this is a confusing signal that can easily be construed to send the wrong message. Her street deserves to be right in the city center! Šimaitė’s life has recently come to new and deserved attention thanks to Julia Sukys’s important recent book, Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite.
RELATED:
MORE STREETS, PLAQUES AND MONUMENTS HONORING HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS
MUSEUM THAT HONORS PERPETRATORS
“PEACE PARK” THAT HONORS PERPETRATORS
INTERNATIONAL PETITION
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Kazys Škirpa, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Julia Sukys, Kazys Škirpa, Ona Simaite, Streets named for Holocaust collaborators
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Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
A month ago my article “A Mine for the Myth” was published in the international magazine Мы здесь (We Are Here). I mentioned the solemn ceremony of the reburial of the former prime minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania Juozas Ambrazevičius Brazaitis. I’d like to quote the last paragraph.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Opinion, Pinchos Fridberg, Politics of Memory
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Evaldas Balčiūnas Remembers February 16th 2013 March in Central Kaunas
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
Editor’s note: This adapted translation from the Lithuanian original, by Geoff Vasil, has been approved by the author.
On February 16 I visited Kaunas. I heard the neo-Nazis would try to desecrate the nation’s freedom, for which people of the country of all ethnicities had struggled. Sadly, the neo-Nazis are now shouting loudly: “Lithuania for Lithuanians…”
One of the organizers of the march boasted the vanguard of the march would be carrying a portrait of Ambrazevičius.
It’s worth recalling what sort of person he was. In 1941 Ambrazevičius led the Provisional Government formed by the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front), the Provisional Government which called Lithuanian policemen to serve the Nazis, set up a concentration camp (at the Seventh Fort, where it all ended in the murder of several thousand Jews), and even while realizing the Nazis no longer needed their service, this gang went on to promulgate the “Regulations on the Situation of the Jews,” which legally deprived their neighbors of human rights, while on the ground armed people were already murdering Jews throughout Lithuania.
The author and his friends and colleagues who constituted the small “anti-fascist zone” at the March 16th neo-Nazi parade in Kaunas, Lithuania on the occasion of the nation’s independence day.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Events, Human Rights, Kaunas, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Holocaust Survivors in Israel Protest Neo-Nazi March in Kaunas
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Israel, Joseph Melamed, Kaunas, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views
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Kaunas Police Confirm that Neo-Nazi March on Independence Day Proceeding with Municipality’s Blessing
In response to a letter from the editor of this journal, expressing concern at various internet and other threats against those who would dare oppose the neo-Nazi march scheduled for 16 February 2013 in the center of Kaunas, a reply has been received from the police in Kaunas which does not address the direct issue of safety, but makes it clear that the march is approved by the powers that be in the municipality.This is important because of the various rumors spread by various organizations that ultranationalist youth have decided to march through central Kaunas with or without permission. The letter reads, in translation:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Kaunas, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches
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New Paper by Per Anders Rudling on the Ukrainian Far Right
An important new paper by Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University, Sweden, has appeared in the new volume, Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. The collective volume brought out by Routledge (New York & London) is edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson.
Dr. Rudling’s paper, entitled “The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda” comprises the sections:
Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, History, News & Views, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine
Tagged Per Anders Rudling
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2013: Call on US State Dept to Reject Politics of Holocaust Denial and Appeasement of Eastern Europe’s New Far Right
Shock of 2012: When a NATO-EU Ally Reburied and Glorified its 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Signed Orders for Kovno Ghetto
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?
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Shock of 2012: 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister Reburied with Full Honors
Compiled by Dovid Katz
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EU/NATO Ally Honors Holocaust Collaborator; Lithuanian Jewish Community Issues Protest; 3 US Congressmen Write to Prime Minister
Remains of 1941 fascist leader Juozas Ambrazevičius (Brazaitis) met by honor guard at Vilnius Airport on 17 May 2012 and reburied in Kaunas’s Church of the Resurrection on the 20th, as city’s mayor dismisses criticism.
Office of the prime minister, who signed off on government funding (€8,700 / US $11,000), defends reburial & honors of the 1941 Nazi puppet “prime minister” who personally signed the protocols confirming Nazi orders for (1) “all means” against Jews (but avoiding executions in public); (2) setting up a concentration camp for Lithuanian Jews [euphemism for the carnage underway at the Seventh Fort]; (3) all Kaunas Jews to be herded into a ghetto within 4 weeks (English here).
SEE ALSO:
Collaborators Glorified section
Previous sanitization program
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, EU, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, Human Rights, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?
Tagged Antisemitism in Lithuania, Double Genocide, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Revisionism, Jonathan Brent, Juozas Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Lithuanian Activist Front, Lithuanian Provisional Government of 1941, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, Skirpa + Brazaitis, Tim Snyder, Vytautas Magnus University, Yivo, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
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End of the World. And the Day After …
O P I N I O N
by Monica Lowenberg
It is the 24th of December 2012, three days after the announced end of the world. I am sitting at my desk drinking a cup of a tea. No gaping hole has suddenly swallowed me up, no heavens have collapsed, no earthquakes have caused Tsunamis to sweep coastal towns. My cat is blissfully unaware of the commotion millions of people around the world have caused on mountain tops, at sacred sites and even in a museum in Russia which for apparently only $1,500 offered salvation in the underground bunker of the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Apparently the museum sold all 1,000 tickets in one fell swoop and I am sure now regret that they offered a 50% discount if nothing happened. Tant pis. It is amazing how people will believe anything today. Even some very intelligent people.
The last time I looked at the international petition site I set up against the SS marches in Latvia, in number one place, above any human rights cause, came the rights of Shetland ponies. I am not sure what happened to the Shetland ponies but clearly something must have, as thousands and thousands of people across the world vitriolically and vociferously protested and voted for their rights and rightly so. However, when it comes to the rights of humans the voting finger is in most cases nowhere to be seen.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Human Rights, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
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Landsbergis’s New Book Tries (Yet Again) to Sanitize the 1941 Hitlerist “Provisional Government” of Lithuania
B O O K S
by Geoff Vasil
Vytautas Landsbergis, Rezistencijos pradžia [“The Beginning of the Resistance: June 1941: Documents on the Six-Week Provisional Government of Lithuania”], Vilnius 2012.
MEP Vytautas Landsbergis, former speaker of the Lithuanian parliament and leader of the Lithuanian independence movement in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, unveiled his latest polemic at a ceremony cum press conference held on the first floor of the Signatarų Namai building in Vilnius’s Old Town on September 11, 2012, the historic site where Lithuanian independence was proclaimed from the balcony to the street below sometime around February 16, 1918.
This small book—there’s only 22 pages written by Landsbergis, the rest is a motley collection of supposedly historic documents—is an attempt to answer criticism of the Lithuanian Government and Catholic Church’s ceremonial reburial of Lithuanian Nazi puppet prime minister Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis and other concurrent celebrations in the spring of 2012.
Posted in Books, Collaborators Glorified, Geoff Vasil, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Geoff Vasil, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), Lithuanian Provisional Government (1941), SLS (Summer Literary Seminars), Theory of CIA prisons in Lithuania, Vytautas Landsberrgis
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